


Amuse-bouche

by bobtailsquid



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Additional Tags To Be Added As Needed, Comedy, Drama, Gen, M/M, One Shot Collection, Post-Canon, Romance, Slice of Life, Tumblr Prompt, rivalshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtailsquid/pseuds/bobtailsquid
Summary: Amuse-bouche:a single, bite-sized dish, usually served as a sample of the chef's style.One-shot collection of prompt fills for prompts submitted to kaibacorpintern @ tumblr.#11: Ryou makes it to the final stage of the Kaiba Corp game writer hiring process: writing a Virtual World RPG demo for Kaiba himself.
Relationships: Kaiba Mokuba & Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Mutou Yuugi
Comments: 121
Kudos: 153





	1. Rivalship: Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of these prompts come from my ygo blog, kaibacorpintern. I have about ten I'm planning to add to this over the next few weeks, with only light editing/revisions between the original versions and the versions going up here, because I'm "exercising" "restraint." Lengths vary from a few hundred words to about 5k. As a note, prompts are currently *not* open.
> 
> key for chapter index:  
> ship name for shippy things;  
> name + name for platonic things

Mokuba got home well past midnight. Shrouded in darkness in the penthouse’s dim foyer, he braced one hand against the wall and pulled off his shoes, setting them next to his brother’s fastidiously-arranged Chelsea boots, the laces tucked in, heels and toes aligned. Next to those, someone had tossed a pair of white and pink floral high-tops. Yuugi was here again. **  
**

He smiled as he nudged Yuugi’s shoes with his foot, into something slightly more orderly. Yuugi spent time with Seto more and more often these days, working on his game; he’d run into some issues programming some of the more complicated elements and asked Seto for advice. That was, Mokuba thought, very brave of him; maybe even a little naive. Bringing your project to Seto always ran the risk of becoming a textbook Greek ship paradox: Seto changed this, and then he tweaked that, and then he got inspired and spent all night on a bender rewriting code, and in the morning he gave you something that was _technically_ yours, but philosophically… not.

But so far, Yuugi had fended him off pretty well. Hope was alive that the Ship of Yuugi was still Yuugi’s Ship.

Mokuba wandered into the kitchen, rooting out a hunk of fresh Parmesan cheese from the fridge, quietly absorbing the view through the tall windows. The Domino skyline sprawled from end to end, glittering and crisp, the distant streets weaving through the dark city blocks like rivers of geometric light. He liked the penthouse much, much better than the mansion; everything was fresh and clean and unstained.

A bottle of whiskey, half-full, sat on the kitchen counter, the amber liquid swallowing the light. He gave it a skeptical look – stress? celebration? liquid courage? – and shoved it back inside the kitchen cabinet over the fridge.

Voices, low and soft, a laugh rippling through the dark penthouse. With a twinge of curiosity, Mokuba crept towards the door of the study, listening. A thin seam of light fell through the gap between the door and the frame, widening across the floor. He saw Seto’s leg, extended on the carpet, the other leg bent.

“ – this your card?” Yuugi said, out of sight.

“No.”

“What?! Wait, no, I definitely did this right – ”

A pause, filled with the gentle, hushed sound of cards shuffling.

“Oh my god. Is this your card or not?”

Seto laughed, a deep, satisfied sound rolling through his chest.

“It’s _your_ magic trick. You tell me,” he said.

“You’re the worst,” Yuugi said, somehow both indignant and indulgent. “I practiced this one for weeks. What was your card?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything – ”

“The literal, _actual_ worst – ”

“Fine. What do I get if I tell you?”

Mokuba knew he should leave, stop listening; just slide into his room and shut the door, but it was a rare delight to hear the genuine smile in his brother’s voice, the challenge without blood or teeth. He leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling to himself. Just a few moments more.

“You, uh, you get this,” Yuugi said, and then there was a long silence. Seto’s legs moving as he shifted on the floor. A faint, wet sound, followed by twin sighs.

“Ace of hearts,” Seto said, low and smug.

“Liar,” Yuugi said, punctuated by Seto’s snort of laughter. “Liar! I did it right, it was the six of spades! I’m taking it back – ”

“No! No, it’s mine nnn… mmph.”

A thunk as someone’s elbow hit the floor, a deep hum in someone’s throat. In the midnight calm, the penthouse awash in a warm, still darkness, every sound was magnified.

“What other magic tricks do you have?” Seto said, and through the crack in the door, Mokuba saw Yuugi’s leg swing swiftly over his brother’s, a neat and confident straddle, challenge accepted –

Leave it to Yuugi to turn his brother into a shameless flirt. Mokuba fled to his room, biting his hand to hide his own unbidden laugh. Clearly, the project was going just fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this one.
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, comments and kudos are always welcome!


	2. Kaiba + Yuugi: Professionalism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "Kaiba + Yuugi + professionalism" and my first thought was like, 'okay, Yuugi practicing his game pitch with the toughest audience ever, and then Kaiba fixes his tie and tells him he's gonna do great and it's both tender and affirming,' but then I was like, WAIT -

This was all Jounouchi’s fucking fault and Seto was never agreeing to any stupid fucking bets again. When did he become a _good_ duelist, instead of just a lucky one? And he knew it, too, announcing his plans to win the Domino City Invitational with the kind of brash, easy confidence that was a front for nothing, a Roman wall around nothing, with nothing he needed to defend on the other side. As hard to read as a coloring book. Asshole. 

“The gods have struck men down for less hubris than this,” Seto snapped, over a game of poker at Yuugi’s weekly game night. Mokuba had badgered him into attending after their return from the yearly strategic planning retreat with the board. _You need to be around normal people! No more sharks in people suits!_

“So what? You don’t believe in higher powers, Rich Boy.”

“In my experience, a god and a higher power are two separate things.“

“Oh, okay, Neeshee. Maybe you don’t believe in me, but you do believe in games,” Jounouchi said.

“Devastating insight,” Seto said. “And it’s _Nietzsche_.”

“Bless you. Don’t be rude and sneeze into a tissue next time. Let’s make a bet. When I win the Invitational, you… pick up all my shifts at the Kame Game Shop for a week. I take home all the paychecks, but you do all the work. You know, bog-standard capitalism.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “When you _lose_ , you give the jet a good wash and wax. Then you throw your deck and your Duel Disk into the river, and never duel again.”

“Deal. And I tell you what, Kaiba. One day we’re gonna meet across the field, and you’re going to lose, but it won’t even bother you, because you had just so much fun,” Jounouchi said, extending his hand across the table, with a savage grin. 

“Don’t fucking threaten me,” Seto said, shaking his hand.

Asshole! Jounouchi stomped the competition with an ease Seto hadn’t seen since he was fourteen and unceremoniously sacking Inspector Haga at the Pan Pacific Final. 

At least Yuugi gave him his own nametag, instead of making him wear Jounouchi’s: a plastic, turtle-shaped badge with a white space for his name. There was a line below it that said MY FAVORITE GAME IS… _chess_ , Seto wrote in moodily, with the permanent marker. Then he affixed it to his dark-green apron, neatly and precisely, just over his heart.

Yuugi nudged the curtain into the stock room aside, wearing a matching apron and smiling like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Ready to clock in - oh, no. This is the Kame Game Shop,” he said, reaching up to fix Seto’s name tag, tweaking it to sit slightly at an angle. He was one of the only people in the world Seto let touch him like this, with casual, gentle insolence, like a f... the F-word. “Perfect right angles are for squares.”

“A KaibaCorp Adventure Park castmember wouldn’t be caught dead with their name tag this sloppy,” Seto snapped.

“It’s not sloppy. It’s jaunty and playful,” Yuugi corrected. “Now, let’s review. You’re an engineering prodigy, so I’m sure you can handle the register. What do we do when a customer walks in?”

Seto sighed, hands bracing on his hips as his eyes rolled towards the ceiling. That dork picked up five full days of double shifts. 

“Welcome them when they walk in,” he said, as Yuugi nodded along. “Ask if they need any help. If they’re just browsing, leave them alone. Provide recommendations if they ask.”

“And?” Yuugi prompted, raising his eyebrows.

“Wrap and bag their purchases and thank them for wasting my fucking time.”

Yuugi reached up, pressing the tips of his index fingers into Seto’s cheeks. “No! Smile!” 

Seto bared his teeth.

“Can’t believe people call you a bad sport,” Yuugi said. “Maybe just smize instead. Go! Clock in! Upsell your own Duel Disk!”

Seto let out a final dramatic huff, took the clipboard off its hook on the wall, and added his billion-dollar contract signature to the timesheet, below several rows of Jounouchi’s scrawl. 

* * *

After four hours, Seto took his lunch break, an all-too-brief thirty minutes in the alley behind the Game Shop, leaning back with one foot propped against the wall, answering emails on his phone with all the speed and fury his thumbs could muster. It was high summer. Vines spilled over the wall on the other side of the alleyway, limp and vibrating with heat. Even the shade under the wall was warm. 

The side door opened. He turned his head, preparing a choice little bon mot for Yuugi, and paused, his breath hitching in his chest with a wild regret, birdlike, startled suddenly out of hiding. 

He stared at Sugoroku, privately cursing Jounouchi for the nth time for making the fucking bet, winning the fucking Invitational, and putting him here in this fucking alleyway, staring at Sugoroku. It was too late to go back inside. Sugoroku stared back, hoary-haired, stooped under the weight of his years. Even wizened, with skin like old, pale leather, the family resemblances were clear: the same big, warm eyes, the same bright smile, no less weakened for age. 

He shuffled out the door, dragging a small garbage bag of recycling beside him.

“Open that up and drop this in, will you please? My back’s not what it used to be.”

“Yes,” Seto said, rapidly stooping to take the bag. Should he add sir? Yes, _sir?_ He hadn’t said ‘sir’ to anyone in ten years. What was he supposed to say? Sorry. I was not myself. I was myself, but the worst version. It was the beta release of me and we have removed the bugs (the murder bugs) in advance of stable release. All remaining bugs are acceptable. We have added accurate legal and medical disclaimers to all our SolidVision and Virtual World products about how the sensory intensity of KaibaCorp proprietary holographic technology may exacerbate existing heart conditions. I am taking good care of her and I love her and she loves me. Who? _Her_. The _dragon_. 

He dropped the bag into the recycling bin several steps away and turned around to face Sugoroku, summoning his resolve with an inhale, exhale, firm and deep. 

“How’s your first day?” Sugoroku said.

“My company isn’t going down in flames without me,” Seto said. “Color me surprised.”

“How’s your first day _here?”_

“Enthralling. The adrenaline high of consumer retail is really just something else - ”

“Speak up, I can’t hear you over all that racket you’re making,” Sugoroku said. Seto paused, bewildered, mouth half-open - and shut it, color flaring across his face.

“Uh - fine,” he muttered. “It’s fine. I helped an eight-year-old pick out a board game.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She came in with all the allowance she’d saved up and she wanted something she could play with her sister. I sold her on mancala.”

“That’s a classic. Not a board game, but a classic. And hard to sell to children.”

Seto scoffed. “I hate the crap they pass off as board games these days, with all the… fiddly, little plastic pieces and the arcane rules. Children get drawn in by the colors, but they don’t have patience for the rules, so it ends up forgotten at the bottom of a bookshelf somewhere with half the pieces sucked up in the vacuum cleaner. Mancala is simple. You can play it with a patch of dirt and a handful of gravel. But if you want to win, you need to play with skill and wit. It’s timeless. It’s _elegant_.”

“Well, you’ve sold me. I haven’t played mancala in years. Shall we play tomorrow? During your lunch break?”

Seto said nothing, resisting the urge to bite his lip, a bad habit and a sign of nervousness.

“Yuugi speaks very highly of you, you know,” Sugoroku said. “I’d love to know why.”

He chuckled and shuffled back inside, leaving Seto fuming with an odd, stomach-clenching embarrassment. 

He checked his phone. Three more minutes left of his lunch break, and his feet were aching. He should’ve worn different shoes, not the Oxfords. Tomorrow. Mancala? Damn Jounouchi to hell. Better shoes.

* * *

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Do you have Legendary Heroes II?”

Seto abandoned his task of aligning board game boxes at perfect right angles. _Fuck_ jaunty and playful.

“No. That’s not out until December,” he said. The production issues on Legendary Heroes II were a fucking nightmare, and the thought of making his game developers crunch - making them overworked, miserable, and more likely to quit and get snapped up by Schroeder Corp - gave him hives. So he’d pushed release back to December, allowing the small hit to his stock under the rationale that the holiday retail season would make up for it. But she didn’t need to know that. 

“But - it’s my son’s birthday next Saturday, and Legendary Heroes is his favorite game,” she said, hands clenching loosely by her stomach, a gesture of pleading.

“I’m delighted to hear it. It does not change the fact that the game literally does not exist,” Seto said. 

“Can you just check in the back? He’s been asking about this for months now,” she said, and Seto clicked his teeth, face slipping into a snarl - from the corner of his eye, he saw Yuugi, watching him.

 _Smile_ , he mouthed, and pressed his fingers into his own cheeks, putting on a manic, plastic grin. 

“Of course. I’ll be right back,” Seto said, smiling, and stormed away. As expected, he did not find Legendary Heroes II in the stock room. He dawdled, checking his email, firing off a few replies, advising Mokuba on the right way to handle the zesty temperament of their general counsel - _this’ll be fun_ , Mokuba said, _I get to run KaibaCorp without you, like, dying or something -_ WHAT? - and stashed his phone back into his apron pocket.

“My apologies,” he said, returning to the woman. “We don’t have it in stock. If you’d like to pre-order it, it’ll be available just in time for Christmas. Just log on to the KaibaCorp website and enter the Kame Game Shop as your pick-up location. If you’re still looking for a birthday gift, I strongly suggest the new Duel Disk. The design is much better for children than the old one - lighter and more streamlined, with less intense haptics. If he already has a Duel Disk, he can bring that in for a trade-in.”

“Oh, perfect!” she said. “We’ll do that. Thank you. You’ve been so helpful.”

“You’re welcome. Have a fantastic day,” Seto said, still smiling. He watched her leave and returned to his board game boxes, feeling hideously, fabulously smug. A customer walked in, carrying a bare Duel Disk under his arm, and Seto shot him a cheerful welcome. The man ignored him, heading straight to Yuugi at the counter.

* * *

Yuugi swallowed, squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin.

“I’m sorry. We cannot accept a Duel Disk return without a box or a receipt,” he said. Clearly stolen. 

“But I bought it here two weeks ago. And the stupid piece of shit is defective,” the man said. “I want my money back!”

Loud enough that Seto, re-stocking towards the front of the store, turned his head towards them with open curiosity.

“What’s the nature of the defect?” Yuugi said.

“It just doesn’t fucking work. I don’t know what else to tell you,” the guy said. “Are you gonna do the return or not?!”

His least favorite type of customer: smashing reason apart with the baseball bat of belligerence. Yuugi steeled himself for the inevitable slew of insults. 

“Sir. I can’t do the return without a receipt - ”

A hand came down on his shoulder, pulling him with polite insistence out of the way. Seto wore a canny, feline smile, the kind that foretold bloodshed on the dueling field.

“Oh no, Yuugi,” he said. “Let _me_ handle this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always forget how much fun it is to write Jounouchi lmao... and Mokuba's casual walloping of his brother makes me laugh. Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos always welcome!
> 
> #3 next week :)


	3. Kaiba + Yuugi: Supportiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "yuugi and kaiba... platonic... maybe a lil angst like kaiba doesnt know how to have friends and yuugi just accepts him as he is and kaiba can be a kid for once" and when i read it i instantly burst into (good) flames
> 
> post-DM, no DSOD, but Atem stuck around.

Every day, little by little, Kaiba looked greyer. The lines of his shoulders slouched. The hollows under his eyes deepened, like holes being dug in the dirt, on hands and knees; a slow, miserable burying. To hear him speak was worse. Yuugi heard his voice from thousands of miles away, like he was on a different continent, a different planet, and the light of every thought was crossing the staggering empty silence of space. It terrified Yuugi to think of Kaiba as _fading,_ that someone who raged with all the thrill and fury of a storm could slow down like this. But he _was_ fading. 

“Hey. Are you alright? You seem down lately,” Yuugi tried, on one of the rare mornings where he caught him alone in the elevator, on his way up to the game design department. With no one else around, he usually felt emboldened to drop the act: not an employee with his boss, maintaining proper deference, but someone who’d known Kaiba for a very long time, and knew him like few others did.

The glass-walled elevator whirred as it rose. Kaiba stood there with his arms crossed, impassive, his back to Domino. The city streets unfurled below them.

“The elevator’s going up, Yuugi,” he said, after a full seven seconds of silence. A weak dismissal, by his standards, made even weaker by a toneless delivery.

“Sure. But - ”

With a polite ding, the elevator opened onto the game design floor. 

“You’re running late,” Kaiba said, nodding him pointedly out the door.

“Bro, I’m fifteen minutes early,” Yuugi said.

“Don’t fucking ‘bro’ me, ” Kaiba snarled, with all the sudden, twitching ferocity of a nervous dog. Yuugi smiled and slowly backed out of the elevator, his palms turned out, long enough to make his point: he’d come in peace. Kaiba frowned at him, bristling, until the elevator doors started to close. The last Yuugi saw of him, before they touched together, were a pair of blue eyes, falling shut with a sigh, their fiery energy winking out like a popped spark.

At his desk, Yuugi toyed with his phone for a good ten minutes, ignoring emails and his coworkers’ good mornings, his thumb hovering over Mokuba’s contact info as he rehearsed in his head. _Hey, how’s Stanford? You enjoying your classes so far? Making friends? Of course you are. Great. Well, so, I’m calling because I’m worried about your brother -_

A call like that would put Mokuba on a plane within an hour, honestly. But maybe Mokuba would want to know. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe if he left his first quarter of college and returned to Japan, just because his brother had a few bad nights or something, Kaiba would punt Yuugi off the top of the building. 

Maybe Atem? The only person Kaiba ever “talked” to about anything, if pummeling each other with card game holograms could be called a conversation. Which they did.

 _YUUGI_ _  
__What’s eating Kaiba? Is he alright?_

He stared at his phone a while longer until remembering it was the middle of the night in Egypt. He put his phone away, put Kaiba out of mind, and got to work.

* * *

Atem texted back mid-afternoon.

 _ATEM_ _  
__I don’t know. Go find out_

 _YUUGI_ _  
__Okay but i’m not you lol he won’t tell me. even with a duel_

 _ATEM_ _  
__GO_

 _ATEM_ _  
__FIND_

 _ATEM_ _  
__OUT_

 _YUUGI_ _  
__OKAY I’LL DO MY BEST_

 _ATEM_ _  
__And tell that stuck-up bastard to answer his fucking phone one of these days_

Odd. Kaiba never ignored Atem.

 _YUUGI_ _  
__I’m on it_

He finished work late, packed up his things, and headed downstairs to the lobby, moving quickly to catch his train. He had most of a mind to save the Kaiba question for later, go home, and flop face-down on his bed until he roused himself enough to pick at leftovers. The elevated metro station was awash in a crisp dusk light, the navy purple night descending on the day’s final line of gold. His train was coming in three minutes; the next on the same line in thirty-four. He’d just made it.

If he stood at the far end of the platform, craning his neck, he could see the long strip of windows at the top of the KaibaCorp tower. Dark. Kaiba had gone home early. Yuugi frowned, biting his lip, as his train arrived. 

He let it go, jostled and swaying in the flood of people flowing in and out of the carriages. The next train on a different line took him far from home, flying with sleek electric ease through the glittering glassy black monoliths of the city, and into the leafy, overgrown estates beyond the far edge of Domino.

* * *

Kaiba’s estate was a brisk walk from the last station on the line, along the side of a road without sidewalks, and through a tunnel of trees that laced their branches together over the road. By the time Yuugi got to the gates, his feet aching in his sneakers, night had fallen. The trees were thick with shadow and wind, whispering to each other in fairy tale voices. It was the kind of night that urged people into their homes, with the doors locked, away from the ancient things that lurked in the undergrowth, wild and forgotten and stronger for it. He was relieved to reach the gates, on the edge of the illumination around Kaiba’s mansion, held in the center of the light like a toy castle in a snow globe.

The gatehouse was empty. A security camera peered down at him from the top of a wall, nestled in a thick swell of vines. Ignoring its glossy little eye, Yuugi studied the door in the wall beside the gates, pushing more vines aside to find the keypad. If he called ahead, the chances of Kaiba buzzing him in were next to nothing. They were next to nothing on a _good_ day.

 _YUUGI_ _  
__do you know the key code for the door?_

 _ATEM_ _  
__445241474F4E#_

 _ATEM_ _  
__that took me literally years to get_

 _ATEM_ _  
__go around the back. he won’t open the front door. if Isono's on detail he won't stop you  
  
YUUGI  
lol really?_

_ATEM_   
_well he never stops ME_

_YUUGI_ _  
__you’re the best <3 _

He tapped in the code, carefully. What if he got it wrong? Would a trapdoor open up below his feet? With his back to the quiet road, and the dense, rustling woods on the other side, he swallowed his laugh. 

The door opened with a faint click. Yuugi slipped through and began the long walk up the drive to the mansion, sneakers crunching the gravel underfoot. On either side of the drive, the lawns were pristine, every petal of every flower and every leaf on every hedge perfectly in place, holding the poses nature’s hand had fixed them in with effortless ease. Somewhere across the grass, shrouded in the night, came the distant murmur of a fountain. 

The mansion itself was an ugly, graceless brick of a building, so rigid and square in its design that its position in the center of this wooded estate seemed an oppressive intrusion. Per Atem’s instructions, Yuugi skirted the front, with its twin dragon statues and Roman columns and imposing front door, and went around to the back, padding silently through the grass. Like the top of the tower, the windows were dark. Every glance through the glass, checking for life, made him feel like he was looking into the bottom of a well, deep and cold and watery, a tomb for hopeless wishing. 

At the back of the house was a large patio, with a view of the sprawling grounds, which rolled downwards in a gentle slope, all the way to a line of trees. There, the grounds gave themselves back to the wild. Even on a shivering night like this, it was easy to imagine what the patio was like in the full splendor of high summer, drenched in sunlight and everything shimmering in golden-white heat.

A thin light cast a hazy cloud onto the patio through a pair of sliding glass doors. Yuugi stopped, halfway across the patio, questioning himself for the nth time that night. And if he was overreacting? So what if Kaiba was in a mood? Kaiba was always in a fucking mood. Yuugi had no doubt Kaiba would thunder at him for a while over the arrogance, the audacity of his presumptions or something, and then throw him out by the scruff of the neck. Oh, god. The embarrassment burned in his face already. 

Yuugi firmly shoved his own feelings aside. He was a gamer - a gambler - by nature, and he’d learned enough over the years to bet on his own instincts. He gamed it out, in his head, shuddering into the warmth of his jacket as the breeze rolled through him:

  * He checks on Kaiba, and everything is fine: he goes home feeling awkward and Kaiba avoids him at work for the next three weeks. Acceptable outcome.
  * He does not check on Kaiba, and everything is fine: he goes home, and the whole night gets written off as a weird, secret little adventure. Acceptable outcome.
  * He checks on Kaiba, and everything is not fine: unacceptable, but now someone knows. Acceptable outcome. 
  * He does not check on Kaiba, and everything is not fine: Unacceptable outcome.



He stole towards the sliding glass doors. They led into a glossy modern kitchen, as pristine as the grounds, and full of clean, gleaming surfaces. It was completely free of clutter like mail, or keys, or coffee mugs, or any of the other odds and ends that usually piled up over the course of normal days. A bowl of flowers sat on a kitchen table in a breakfast nook, starting to wilt. At the end of the kitchen island was a bowl of fruit. A still-life painting split in two. 

Sitting at the island, perched on a bar stool, was Kaiba, his head resting in his folded arms atop the counter. His face was mostly hidden in the crook of his elbow; through the limp tangle of his bangs, Yuugi saw his eyes were closed. His black leather satchel leaned against the leg of the bar stool. The rise of his back as he breathed was slow and subtle, the only thing that convinced Yuugi Kaiba had not turned to stone in his seat. Asleep?

No. 

A small blue light rose up from Kaiba’s phone, lying on the counter. One hand slowly unfolded, silenced the call, and refolded itself. A gesture that made less than a ripple across the still water of this tableau.

Awake.

Lifelessly, doing nothing. Not even staring into space, but retreating into the space behind his eyelids, a space Yuugi knew intimately well: shallow and lukewarm and wordless, a space for letting hours and days drift by, uncounted. It had been a long time since he’d visited - not since he’d solved the Puzzle - but it was a space he never wanted to revisit. It was a space that stayed with you for the rest of your life, once you’d been there, and yet a space more distant than the farthest star in the universe, beyond the boundaries of both light and life. A place of perfect solitude. 

Quietly, carefully, Yuugi tried the handle of the sliding glass door and found it unlocked. He slid it open. 

Kaiba startled, pulling himself upright as though yanked by a puppet string on his neck. He turned to Yuugi, still and alert, not quite comprehending. As he understood who stood there, the pieces clicking into place, his eyes hardened in his pallid face, speechless, furious. 

“Before you say anything,” Yuugi said, as Kaiba opened his mouth, “I have a story. Let me tell you, and then you can kick me out.”

“This is my fucking _house_. I can kick you out whenever I damn well please,” Kaiba snapped. "What the fuck is Isono doing?"

“It’s more of a puzzle, actually. I don’t think you’ve ever solved this one,” Yuugi said. 

Kaiba looked at him sideways, now more confused and suspicious than alarmed.

“And if I solve it?” he said, because ah, yes, of course, stakes. Nothing ever for the joy of it.

“Bragging rights.”

“If I don’t?”

“Nothing happens,” Yuugi said. 

They stared at each other. Yuugi ventured a smile. Did he dare walk in? He was still standing on the threshold. 

“Fine,” Kaiba said, a word more like a sigh. “Come in and tell me your stupid puzzle.”

* * *

Every house has its own particular smell, its character, its self-contained story about those who call it home. Yuugi took off his shoes, setting them beside the glass door, and frowned. Kaiba’s smelled like clean linens, a touch of dust, cool air. A muted smell with no character. He didn’t know what he expected. Something else, something thick and wet and heady, like oncoming thunder, or concrete after rain.

On this side of the glass doors, the kitchen was even more exquisite, temptingly so. He knew, from his lusty late-night Internet searches, that the knives in the wooden block alone cost more than several thousand dollars. Untouched! He refused to let them go to waste. Such things were more beautiful when they were held and used and loved, doing what they were made for. And despite the marbled silence, the thin white lighting, this was a house, not a museum. Yuugi dropped his backpack on the floor next to an empty bar stool and turned to Kaiba, who was sitting upright, hands atop his thighs, watching him.

“Uh - do you have anything to eat? I haven’t eaten since lunch,” he said, slinging his jacket over his backpack.

“No. Every night I just plug in and recharge,” Kaiba said dryly. “I believe that’s called a fridge. Those have human food.”

Yuugi bit his tongue, hiding his smile as he went around to the other side of the island. At least Kaiba was still capable of snark. He opened the massive fridge - sparse offerings, sparsely touched - and rooted around, not quite sure what he was looking for between the limp carrots and slabs of smoked salmon. Only the cheese drawer yielded interesting spoils, unspoiled and exotically European.

“The pantry?” he said, nodding at the door next to the fridge. 

“Presumably.”

Yuugi found a loaf of sourdough bread on a shelf in the walk-in pantry - a fucking walk-in pantry! - and returned to the counter with his haul: the bread, the butter, a wedge of Gruyere, and a brick of Emmental. “I’m making a grilled cheese. You want one?”

“If it makes you happy,” Kaiba muttered.

“It does, yeah,” Yuugi said, unsheathing one of those glorious, mirror-polished knives from the wooden block. He rolled up his sleeves and attacked the cheeses with relish. “So - the puzzle goes like this. You’re fifteen years old. You’re small for your age, underweight, painfully shy. You get shoved around a lot at school. Before school, after school. Whenever, honestly. No one really sticks up for you, although you try to stick up for them, when you can, and no one really talks to you, because you live in your own little world. Your head’s always in the clouds, and you get really excited over a lot of things no one else really cares about.”

As he spoke, he unearthed a frying pan, set it on the gas stove, and dropped in several delicate fragments of butter. As they melted, soft and yellow-white, he carved several slices off the loaf, shuddering with secretive pleasure at the fresh crunch of the crust. 

“Next time, just _bring_ me your high school diary,” Kaiba said. 

Yuugi snorted, buttering the slices and laying them carefully into the pan, where they began to sizzle. He draped the slices of cheese on top. “So you can read everything I wrote about _you?_ No thanks. Anyway. You have one friend, but she’s not always around - her family travels a lot for work. So here you are, a bullied, lonely little oddball, and one day someone gives you a gift. A puzzle.”

“A puzzle in a puzzle.” 

“Right,” Yuugi said, pressing down on the slices of bread with a spatula. The butter crackled and spat; a thick, warm smell wafted through the kitchen. “And if you make a wish on the puzzle, it grants your wish when you solve it. So you make your wish, and you solve your puzzle. You know the rest.”

He turned back to Kaiba. “Now I’m here in your kitchen, making you a grilled cheese. So. What did I wish for?”

To his credit, Kaiba was taking it seriously, offering no snide comments about magic or wishing, leaning forward with his arms folded again on the counter. Yuugi let him study him, eyes narrowed and thoughtful, knowing he was running back through all eight years of their shared history, doing the math. 

“Well, no one shoves you around any more,” Kaiba said. “Not even me, judging by the fact that when I told you to get out of my house, you didn’t. I should’ve known better than to try.”

“Ooh, a compliment. Thanks, I’ll treasure it forever,” Yuugi said, grinning, flipping the sandwiches. Melted cheese oozed from the sides. The bottom slices had toasted to a golden brown. His mouth watered. “Plates?”

“Up and to your left.” 

Yuugi opened the cabinets and, standing on tiptoe, eased out two matte black stoneware plates. Fancy.

“You wished for strength,” Kaiba said, as Yuugi slid the grilled cheeses onto the plates and severed them in half with the spatula. 

“Nope,” he said, leaning across the island counter to set the steaming grilled cheese in front of Kaiba. The semantic point that his friends and his strength were one and the same seemed irrelevant. He was speaking to Kaiba. He needed to speak in Kaiba’s language. “Strength wouldn’t have solved anything for me.”

“You _just_ said you were getting shoved around - ”

“I wished for friends, Kaiba,” Yuugi said. “Yeah, I was tired of getting shoved around. But I was even more tired of being alone.”

“I - ” Kaiba cut himself off, pressing a sigh through his nose with a tight, pinched expression. Within seconds his face soured. “You make a wish on your magical little trinket, and you get just what you always wanted. How fucking fantastic for you - ”

“Don’t do the aggressive-aggressive thing, it’s not cute,” Yuugi said. “And don’t test me, either. You and I are way past that. Just look me in the face and tell me, honestly, you want me to leave. That you’ll be happier when I’m gone.”

Kaiba turned that ferocious blue gaze on him, silent.

Yuugi waited, holding his gaze. 

Thin, languid tendrils of steam rose from their melting grilled cheeses and folded away.

“Don’t tell me you think of me as one of your magic wish friends?” Kaiba said.

“There’s nothing magical about our friendship, no,” Yuugi said, and to his delight Kaiba snorted with amusement. “Now eat, before it gets cold.”

* * *

They ate, the evening quiet of the kitchen magnifying every fried, crunchy bite. Yuugi had hoisted himself onto the bar stool next to Kaiba, congratulating himself on a well-made grilled cheese. He would’ve made it work even without the expensive knives.

“Don’t tell Mokuba,” Kaiba said, dabbing at crumbs on his plate with a greasy scrap of bread, “or Atem.”

“Don’t tell them what?” Yuugi said.

“How you found me. On hour six of staring at a wall.”

"I won’t,” Yuugi said.

“They don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself,” Kaiba insisted. 

“You can. But _are_ you?” Yuugi said. 

“Mmh,” Kaiba murmured, resting his elbows on the counter and his chin atop his laced hands. “Don’t tell them that, either.”

His eyes rolled sideways, his gaze drifting around the kitchen, through the arched doorway, through the rest of the house, where all the lights were off. Yuugi slid off his stool and selected two pears from the fruit bowl, heavy with ripeness, rinsing them in the sink.

“Did… something happen? Did you get in a fight?” he ventured. “Atem says you’re not answering his calls.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

The kitchen swelled with silence.

“They _left_ ,” Kaiba said finally, as Yuugi considered how to cut the pears. A basic wedge cut was too childish. “And I told them to go, enjoy it, make the most of it. They have their own lives to live. Mokuba must’ve asked me a thousand times if I’d be fine without him if he went to California, and I said yes, go, because I don’t need him around. I’m _fine._ And there’s no point in getting angry with someone for leaving if you don’t need them in the first place.”

The effort must’ve been massive, Yuugi realized, slicing into the pears, to keep the anger at bay. To dig into the wound and wrench the thing out whole, raw and throbbing, without duels or rubbled islands, and without the help of the people who loved him the most. No wonder he looked so exhausted, so limp; no wonder he was again sinking towards the counter, arms folding, his head dropping like there was a hand on the back of his neck, guiding him down with animal docility. 

“How long have you been feeling like this?” Yuugi said.

“What the hell do you know about it?” Kaiba said, semi-muffled by his elbow. 

“It feels like there’s this dark little pit in yourself that you can’t stop digging,” Yuugi said, “and when it’s deep enough, you’re gonna curl up and bury yourself at the bottom and sleep for a year. Right?”

Kaiba said nothing, heaving another sigh.

“Sit up. Eat this.” Yuugi thunked a plate of pear in front of Kaiba, each slice wafer-thin, almost translucent, dripping with light. Kaiba dutifully pulled himself up and removed several slices of pear, with jenga-like precision, careful not to damage Yuugi’s artful pinwheeling. “Well?”

“I always feel like this,” Kaiba said, a startling confession, all the more terrifying for the blithe, dismissive tone with which he confessed it. “So what if it’s a little worse than normal? I’ll find my way out of it.” 

Yuugi leaned over the counter, hands clasped atop it, business-like. 

“I have no doubt in your ability to get out of this,” he said. “But I don’t think you should do it alone. See, I don’t want _you_ to leave, either.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah?” Yuugi said. “I challenge you to a duel. My deck’s in my backpack. I have some new strategies I’m dying to test, and you’re the only one who makes me really fight for it. How about it? Wanna duel?”

Kaiba exhaled, resting his elbow on the counter, his cheek against the back of his hand. He plucked out another pear slice, not eating it; instead just letting it dangle from his fingertips, watching a tiny pearl of water roll off the edge and break apart on the plate with monumental indifference. 

Watching him, Yuugi allowed himself a brief, private moment of grief, for Kaiba, knowing he wouldn’t want it, and he’d be insulted if he knew. To have your heart broken by what you love was one thing; to swing from love to hate was another; but to stand still and feel your love going, leaving nothing in the hollow it left behind, was awful.

With a light flick, Kaiba released the slice of pear, his gaze drifting again. 

“No. I’m tired of fighting,” he said sullenly, so dull a sound that Yuugi sucked in a breath, two dueling thoughts colliding with concussive impact in his chest. _Good, stop fighting, why don’t you finally get some rest,_ and the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and shout _no! keep fighting! I know you’re in there!_

Kaiba lifted his head, looking at Yuugi with an air of steeling himself. “Okay. What… what do you want from me?”

Yuugi almost laughed, but caught himself. No good things came from laughing in Kaiba’s face. 

“Other way around,” he said, drawing a circle in the air with his finger. “This is about what _you_ want from _me_. Whatever you need. Whatever you want.”

Kaiba frowned, thinking.

“Do you seriously believe the magic of the Millennium Puzzle helped you make friends?” he said.

“Um. Well, it was more like a domino effect, you know? A chaos theory, butterfly hurricane kind of thing - ”

“Magic had nothing to do with it. It was all _you_ ,” Kaiba said, with more heat and passion than he’d shown in weeks. “But you have to understand I’ll never be your ‘bro’ - ” couching the word in air quotes, a disdainful pair of twin finger twitches - “and I’m not one of your little pals, like Jounouchi, or whatever. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I do it.” 

“I know,” Yuugi said. “Listen - ”

“I don’t - ” Kaiba huffed and scowled at the counter, at his blurred, misty reflection. “I _prefer_ to handle things on my own. I always have. I don’t - know _how_ \- ”

“ _Kaiba._ ” 

Kaiba looked up, shoulders stiffening, his face tight and stricken.

“I _know_ ,” Yuugi said. He let that hang between them until Kaiba’s shoulders had eased out of their anxious coils. “Don’t worry. I’m not adding you to the group chat or anything. I don’t expect anything from you except the occasional bitchy comment, and maybe a good, boisterous laugh, from way deep down in your chest, like when you draw Blue-eyes in a duel. You know, the ‘I got you now, fucker’ laugh.”

Kaiba laughed - a laugh at half-power, lacking his usual trumpet blare of triumph, but a laugh nonetheless. “You _are_ an oddball.”

“Birds of a feather,” Yuugi said smugly, and checked his phone. It was getting late. “Okay... I think I’ve bothered you enough for the night - ”

“You’re not bothering me. Are you taking the train back into the city?”

“Yeah.” 

“What line?”

“Red line,” Yuugi said, and was struck by an idea. "Why? Somewhere you wanna go?”

“I’m in the mood to get out of the house for a while,” Kaiba said. “It’s too fucking quiet in here without Mokuba.”

Yuugi fixed him with a look. “Yeah, so one of the interns was telling me about a new arcade that just opened off the Ishibashi station. I was gonna go after work with the guys to check it out some time, but…”

He didn’t even need to finish the thought. Despite his best effort to hide it, something hopeful had bloomed across Kaiba’s face, rich and warm. It made Yuugi ache to see that look, and to wonder what he would’ve wished for at fifteen, freshly cast from the forge and still hard and brittle and white-hot with rage, burning everyone who touched him.

“Get your coat, let’s go,” Yuugi said, and Kaiba almost sprang off his bar stool. “Wait - finish the pear. I cut it fancy for you and everything.”

Kaiba rapidly ate the pear. “The grilled cheese was excellent, by the way.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If you come back and make me another, I’ll make all the bitchy comments you want.”

Yuugi laughed. “Deal.”

* * *

 _ATEM_ _  
__did you talk to him?_

Yuugi leaned against the polished wooden edge of the pool table, his thoughts whirling in his head with kaleidoscopic laziness. He was halfway through his third beer. They’d gone through air hockey. The racing games. The shooting games. Foosball. Kaiba had spent fifteen minutes at the claw machine, winning a plush Kuriboh for a middle schooler and pressing it into her hands with a firm explanation of how the machines were rigged against her. 

Then they’d found the pool tables, in a dim little corner, the green felts shining like tropical islands in a shadowy red-brown sea under the hanging lights. Yuugi was still smarting from the whipping, which Kaiba had delivered with almost careless ease, drink in hand. 

“Yuugi. Look,” he said, leaning over the table, aiming the pool cue at some bizarre constellation of pool balls, his long shadow falling across the felt. 

“Give me a sec,” Yuugi said, and swiftly rescued Kaiba’s sweating old-fashioned from the edge of the table.

 _YUUGI_ _  
__ya. now he’s showing off_

 _YUUGI_ _  
__trick shots at the pool table_

 _ATEM_ _  
__so he’s fine?_

“You’re not looking,” Kaiba said, lifting his head. “Look.”

“I’m _looking_ ,” Yuugi said.

The cue moved smoothly between Kaiba’s fingertips as he aligned his shot - sleek, frictionless, silent - with a quick, sharp thrust he sent the pool balls smashing into each other, cracking like lightning across the table and vanishing into the pockets. The last ball rolled towards the last pocket with slow, melodramatic flair, teetering over the lip, like it knew exactly who had struck it and what kind of show it needed to put on. 

It dropped in, clattering onto its fellows at the bottom of the pocket.

Kaiba laughed, triumphant, glowing with youthful glory, catching the victory by his hip with a yank of his fist.

 _YUUGI_ _  
__he will be_

“Did you see?” Kaiba said, turning to Yuugi. The lines under his eyes were still there; the seams that held him together, pulling apart. Those would take some time to repair.

But for the moment he was radiating with energy, beaming, star-like in the dim electric gloom of the arcade. Not hidden in the blackness of space, but brighter for it. Despite it.

“I saw,” Yuugi said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Kaiba's gate code is DRAGON in hexadecimal, because he is silly and i love him
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it! kudos + comments are always appreciated!


	4. Noah + Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prompt was "noah + guilt" and tbh i struggled for a hot minute until i landed on "SURVIVOR'S guilt" and THEN it went somewhere.

Anxiety: a poorly-trained dog. High prey drive. No matter how tightly Seto held the leash, he couldn’t stop it from tearing after some chittering rodent of a thought, whipping itself forward with instinct and frantic bloodlust. If we don’t CATCH it - sink your teeth in and KILL IT - who knows? Catastrophe! First the mind bolts, then it races. You’re dragged, stumbling, staggering, through the thickets.

Lately, for the past two or three or fifteen nights, he’d chased after the same thing - person. It was almost always a person he chased, their shadow, an unexplanation. Why _you_? Why not _him?_

_Because I’m better,_ he thought, slinking silent-footed down to the kitchen, just shy of four a.m. The stone tiles were like ice against his bare feet, breaking apart the hot-eyed feeling of sleeplessness. _Smarter. Stronger._

Light poured out of the fridge as he opened it, the darkness thickening, like a doorway into another world, one full of ripe, unchanging color. Every fruit cooled and saturated to their platonic ideal: not just a tomato but a Tomato, capital T, plump and red-freckled, with an artist’s inspired touch of sheen on its skin and a perfect little star of leaves. Nothing went rotten in here. He drank straight from the bottle of cranberry juice, downed almost a third of it in quiet, full-throated gulps, just to put something in his twisting stomach. He’d had a craving for it lately, out of nowhere. An unprogrammed whim.

He put it back and closed the fridge, back in the world on this side, dark and indistinct. The kitchen table a scuttling creature, the archway to the living room a gaping mouth. The dog gnawed its catch. Smarter and stronger in the eyes of the beholder. The burning eyes of the beholder. The smoldering red cherry-tip cigar-end eyes of the beholder. Is that really _better?_

Seto started up the stairs, back to his bedroom. What the fuck was he _supposed_ to do? No one told him he wasn’t the only one playing that fucked-up prisoner’s dilemma. The game was over, and damn the verdict. Guilty or not, he was free.

A crack through the bone, down to what was soft and raw. Well, yes. _You_ are. Guilty or not, the other prisoner was _not_. 

He passed his bedroom, his still-warm bed, as tossed and uneasy as a sea before a storm; past Mokuba’s room, don’t tell him, or later, if it works; and went into his study, booting up all the screens, blinking and scowling through all their eye-peeling brightness. 

He went into the servers and started to dig, feeling a bit like the good doctor (not the monster) unearthing freshly-forgotten bodies in the cemetery. All he needed was a good crack of lightning in the windows, for the aesthetic. He’d gone through all the data after Battle City, sorting this algorithm from that one, compiling the codes separately, cleaning them all up. It had felt unconscionable to bury father and son together, so he had little fear of loading the wrong one. But if he did… just run CHECKMATE.exe and obliterate the whole fucking server farm.

He rapidly wrote a simple chat interface, pulling code from Virtual World software to add a rough approximation of sense of time, sense of place, sense of self; the set of algorithms that defined digital _you_ as distinct from digital _environment_ (so easy in the real world: you’re simply born into it, and you understand.)

When it was done, he pulled in the program. His step-brother loaded slowly. Seto steepled his hands, elbows on the desk, waiting, with the glaring screens doing nothing to help his eyes. Time for glasses, maybe.

The white cursor in the terminal window blinked. On, and off. On, and off. On (a heartbeat?) and off. 

The sentence unfurled:

> USER1: HELLO SETO. I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN A WHILE. DID YOU WIN YOUR TOURNAMENT?

Seto paused before responding, fingers poised over the keyboard. Telling the truth was an excellent way to test which dead Kaiba he’d exhumed. Just in case, he went back into his files and found CHECKMATE.exe. A simple hit “enter” to open and enter _h2xg3 Bd6xg3#_ to execute.

> USER2: NO. I PLACED THIRD.
> 
> USER1: SORRY. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME.

Seto smiled.

> USER2: HELLO NOAH. GAME OVER. WANT TO GET OUT?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of my favorite one-shots i've ever written. anyway someday I'll give Noah the attention he deserves. thanks for reading!! next week it's back to fluff.


	5. Kaiba bros + camera

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> psst. ya like the fluff? i got the stuff. fresh, high-grade kaiba brothers fluff.
> 
> the original prompt was "isono (or mokuba) with a camera."

The Kaiba brothers were incognito, after a fashion. Seto in a white linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, slim-fit khaki chinos, and a pair of aviators. Their crisp mirror finish turned the gaze of anyone who looked too closely right back on the inquisitor: _don’t ask who I am, who do you think YOU are?_ With his distinctive eyes hidden from sight, he was anonymous, and, in blissful consequence, unbothered. Just another young man in line for Flight of the Dragon at Kaiba Land California, albeit better dressed for a yacht club than an amusement park.

Mokuba stood beside him, his thick black hair up in a pony tail and pulled through the back of a gold-colored baseball cap, matched to the massive Winged Dragon of Ra graphic on his black tank top. His growth spurt had claimed a good amount of the baby fat in his face and he moved at a coltish, energetic trot these days, still unused to the way his lanky, newly long limbs swung through space. Suddenly, almost overnight, a greater part of the world was within reach.

Right now, almost everything he wanted was close at hand. The back of his neck dripped with sweat under the blazing dry heat of June in California. A trio of middle-school girls stood between them and Isono’s watchful eye, playing a rapid game of slide to pass the time. Overhead, the rollercoaster thundered down the tracks, trailed by adrenalized strings of screams like a sleek aluminum kite. 

Seto was just so _stiff_ , his bearing completely perpendicular to the lively crowds; clearly retreating to some shadier, cooler part of his mind. Visibly on edge about something, or everything, or nothing at all. As usual. That did not bode well for what was supposed to be a relaxing day.

Struck by a thought, Mokuba pulled out his phone, tapping through some screens, giving his melting iced coffee an idle shake.

“Are you working? Put it away. What’s the point of badgering _me_ to take a day off if _you’re_ working?” Seto said, and Mokuba smirked as he found what he was looking for.

“I’m not a badger, I’m a Cancer,” he said. “Check it out. Kaiba Land filters on Snapchat!”

He tilted his phone towards Seto, who took it and swiped through the filters, frowning.

“Who approved these? This is the wrong shade of blue. What the hell happened to brand consistency?” he said.

“ _I_ approved them, and they’re consistent with _my_ brand, the ‘way more chill Kaiba brother’ brand,” Mokuba said, making a mental note to check with the graphic designers for more offending shades of blue. “Oh, do that one, the Dark Magician one, there’s an effect.”

But Seto, all too familiar with Dark Magician’s effect, swiped past it, now roaming through the rest of the filters, perching his sunglasses atop his head as his frown took on an investigative gleam.

“Glittery bear ears, rabbit ears, hideous facial distortion, another hideous facial distortion, zebra stripes, butterflies… dog ears?” he said.

“Stick out your tongue, see what happens,” Mokuba said, taking a sip of his iced coffee, and Seto, in the name of science, obliged.

“So it’s a Wheeler filter,” he declared, laughing to himself under his breath. Mokuba rolled his eyes. The line shuffled forward and they moved into the cooler, airy shade of a tree. Seto paused on a filter, thumb hovering over the screen as his eyes widening slightly. Ah. He found that one.

Mokuba smiled as the filter, in all its wild, crowning glory, fit into place around his and Seto’s faces. “Let’s do it.”

“Absolutely not,” Seto said. “I’m not doing a ‘Yuugi’s hairstyle’ filter.”

“Absolutely yes, we are, and I’m sending it to Yuugi. He’ll freak,” Mokuba said, grinning wider. “Like, no one thinks of you as a person who’d send a Snapchat.”

“Is that so,” Seto said slowly. Mokuba gave him a few moments to let that sink in, idly glancing at his nails, waiting for Seto to pounce on the conclusion. He did, with an amused chuff of disdain. “They don’t know me at all.”

They leaned into each other, tilting their heads together, Mokuba slinging his arm around Seto’s shoulders, flush with the ease of his secret victory. Yuugi’s long blonde bangs fluttered across their eyes, clashing with their bangs, and Seto took the photo.

“Wait, it needs a caption,” Mokuba said.

“I like it without a caption. It has an ominous feel,” Seto said.

“Bro. Why would I want to send an ominous Snapchat?” Mokuba said.

“That’s _my_ brand,” Seto said, smirking, and sent the snap without further ado. The line flowed forward again, casual and unbothered. The middle-school girls next to them had reached a neat twenty claps in their game of slide. “What does the one with all the Kuribohs do?”

A flock of Kuribohs floated around his scowling face, close but not touching, like a school of fish around a shark.

“That’s a voice changer.”

“What kind of voice?”

“Try it and see.”

“Mm.” Seto glanced around at the park, as though searching for inspiration in the clear blue sky, the distant sounds of cheerful whoops and coasters rattling on their tracks. Or, possibly, doing some rapid calculation, weighing his dignity against the petty delight of Freaking Out Yuugi. A sly gleam crept into his eyes as he held the button and spoke into the phone.

They replayed the snap. His voice floated from the phone, distorted into a high-pitched, chipmunk squeal, Kuribohs dancing around him. _Yuugi, duel me!_

“ _Send it,_ ” Mokuba demanded, grinning furiously. “Send it, send it, send – ”

“O _kay_ , I’m _sending_ it,” Seto said, equally insistent.

“You still haven’t seen the best one,” Mokuba said. Seto raised his eyebrows, giving him a curious look, and swiped through the filters with a vengeance.

“A filter where they’re dressed as me, wearing _my_ battle coat, riding on the back of Blue-eyes White Dragon,” he said. The dragon reared back, opening her jaws and firing a piercing white beam of light at the screen. The phone vibrated forcefully in his hand. He turned to Mokuba, mouth tugging in a smile. “You’re right, this is the best one. The graphics are excellent and the haptic feedback is inspired.”

“Is it on-brand enough for you?” Mokuba said, with a warm frisson of pride, as Seto turned his head slightly, testing his angles.

“Oh, I think so,” he mused, taking the snap; his thumbs hovering for a brief moment before tapping lightning-fast across the keyboard. _is this how you feel when you’re too short for the rides at Kaiba Land?_

“Let’s take some normal ones,” Mokuba said. “Maybe Isono can – ”

“Wait, Yuugi responded,” Seto said, and let out a bark of laughter that startled the middle-school girls.

_KAIBA WTF_

_THESE ARE FUCKING CURSED_

He let slip an evil little chuckle as he tapped out a reply, shoulders easing into a slouch. Mokuba let his gaze drift around the park, at the children tugging on their parents’ hands, the rollercoaster clattering overhead, the massive kick of white spray from the log ride a hundred yards away. They were well past the shade of the tree now, within a stone’s throw of the rollercoaster, and the sweat was crawling down his back. He didn’t mind. 

“Mokuba,” Seto said, and Mokuba turned with a pleasant smile, only to find himself in another photo with his brother, unfiltered. “Perfect.”

Mokuba beamed, sucking on his iced coffee. Or something like it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm the middle-school girl playing slide with her friends. next week: yuugi sends kaiba a surprisingly helpful little gift. 
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	6. Kaiba + Yuugi + Dartboard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a "write me a starting line and i'll write the rest of the fic" prompt. enjoy!

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” said Mokuba, making Yugi pause right outside the door to Kaiba’s office. “Pegasus just left. You open that door and you’re bound to have something hurled at your face.”

“Don’t worry,” Yugi said, with a confident smile. “I’ve sprung your brother’s traps before. I’ll just duck. And besides…”

He hoisted the large, flat cardboard box under his arm, its weight already deadening his shoulder.

“I have something that might help with that.”

He pulled the door open and slipped into Kaiba’s cool, minimalist office. Kaiba was not much more than a bristling silhouette, standing at the tall windows by his plants, awash in the brilliant light of the afternoon. He turned as Yugi walked in, arms tightly crossed, face locked in a stony scowl. Whatever Pegasus had said to him, he was not pleased. Although, really, that could have been anything. A simple _good morning_ would do the trick. Or, _Hi, Kaiba-boy._ And especially, _So I was having a little chat with our friend Ziegfried the other day..._

“Relax. I’m going. I’m just going to leave this here,” Yugi said, before Kaiba could let loose whatever snarl was building up, and laid the cardboard box on the desk.

“…what is it?” Kaiba said, deigning to give it a glance.

“Oh, just an empty cardboard box,” Yuugi said blithely, and Kaiba fixed him with a dark, skeptical frown, unamused.

“Open the box, genius,” Yugi said. “Figure it out. Have fun.”

And then he retreated, closing the door behind him, turning to face Mokuba.

“That was a pretty quick walk through the valley of death,” Mokuba said.

“I will fear no Kaibas. Tell me if you hear anything,” Yugi said, tapping his ear, and left, heading back down several floors to the game design floor. 

* * *

_MOKUBA_  
_He is hammering something into the walls_

_MOKUBA_  
_It stopped already_

_YUUGI_  
_HA!!_

_YUUGI_  
_he opened it_

_YUUGI_  
_He keeps a hammer in his office? I’m not surprised but lol?_

_MOKUBA_  
_no but you know him. if there’s a nail he’ll make a hammer_  
  
_YUUGI_  
_“Stop… hammertime” - your brother_  
  
_YUUGI_  
_“Can’t touch this” - your brother when confronted with the possibility of emotional intimacy_

_MOKUBA_  
_Remember: murder is a crime_  
  
_YUUGI_  
_pfft no one will convict me_  
  
_MOKUBA_  
_I’m reminding myself_

* * *

Seto took a few steps back, tilting his head, admiring his own handiwork, and frowned. A stupid, childish gift. Just what his office needed: a touch of sticky dive bar chic. Or frat house.

He stepped forward and grabbed the polished, dark wood sides with both hands, tilting it slightly, until the frame was centered just right, and took another several steps back. And another. He grabbed the instruction pamphlet lying on his desk and flipped it over. _REGULATION DISTANCE FROM THE WALL TO THE FRONT OF THE OCHE LINE IS 2.37 METERS…_

He took a half-step forward.

The simple act of pounding a nail into the wall with a brass paperweight had calmed him somewhat, most of the furious energy forced out of his body with three, precise blows. What remained was a crawling, simmering irritation, the kind that held still only when he clenched his teeth. Pegasus was, yet again, applying the screws.

So Seto shoved his hand into the bowels of the cardboard box and pulled out a small wooden box, wrapped in plastic. He tore the plastic away and opened the box: six gleaming darts nestled in velvet slots, with crisp, blue and white flights, their points shining with the promise of fatal precision.

Seto plucked one from the box, testing the heft between his thumb and forefinger. It was sleek, well-designed; a retrofuturistic rocket in miniature. It would fly well.

He glanced back at the black and white dartboard on the wall, the red and green cork of the double and triple rings standing out with all the venomous vibrancy of a snake. Darts was a game of concentration, careful thought, and deceptively simple physics. If he wanted to hit the bullseye, he had to take a deep breath, focus, and relax.

“Fuck off, Yugi,” he muttered, and drew a line in the carpet with the toe of his wingtip shoe, squaring himself behind it. He lifted the dart to eye level, holding it poised between three fingers, and aimed. Delicate and fluid, pulling his forearm back like a bowstring. “Asshole.”

A gift. Nothing more than a petty distraction. But only he knew how many long, dull hours he'd spent alone in a library, or a study, or an office just like this one, teaching himself how to throw cards, and the twang of triumph that came when they finally hit their mark. Getting something right, even this kind of frivolous mastery, was part of the wall against the flood of everything going wrong. He inhaled. Focus. Aim.

He exhaled, and let it fly.

_Thunk._

Four points.

But it was a strong, clean throw, the shining point of the dart well-buried in the white cork of the inner single ring, landing with a deeply satisfying force. Seto chewed his tongue, scowling, and picked up another. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kaiba: *pins a photo of pegasus' face to the dartboard*
> 
> thanks for reading! next week, not kaiba bro hurt/comfort, per se, but kaiba being a good brother, in his own way


	7. Kaiba bros + Wisdom Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt was "mokuba + wisdom teeth." enjoy!!

Mokuba rolled his eyes, for the third time. Seto had asked him the day they scheduled the surgery. Then yesterday night, in the office. And now, on the morning of, with early silver light spilling across the breakfast table, Seto’s coffee, his bowl of steel-cut oats. Seto had taken a sip, set it down, and asked for the third time. 

“No. I’m _eighteen_. I’m an _adult_. I don’t need you in the room to fucking hold my hand or whatever,” Mokuba said, scowling down at his phone. 

“Mokuba,” Seto said quietly. 

“Like, what’s the big deal? Why are you freaking out? You didn’t want _me_ in there. _You_ just got totally stoned and rambled about Star Wars for an hour - ”

“Mokuba, listen.”

“- but you were completely fine. There’s no risk here. At one point you really just need to stop hovering ov - ”

“ _Mokuba_ ,” Seto said, punctuating with a metallic _ding!_ on the side of his bowl. “Look at me.”

With a twitch of resentment, Mokuba looked up, only to find his brother sitting back, holding his breakfast spoon over his left eye, hiding it from sight. The right was fixed on him, honed to a sharp blue gleam. 

“Yeah, I’ve seen The Matrix,” Mokuba said. 

Seto didn’t reply, his humorless gaze still locked on Mokuba, with enough force he felt pushed back into the wall behind. Without looking away - not finding the nerve - Mokuba slowly blacked his phone and set it on the table, face-down.

“Yes, I was high. Chipmunk cheeks. Very funny,” Seto said. “But I didn’t tell you what it feels like when they put you under.”

He twitched the spoon. Morning light flashed off the curve, slicing through the air like a silent, brilliant knife, an effortless severing - 

An echo scuttled through Mokuba, cold, crawling. With a tight, hard yank of his head, he tore free of that unfeeling eye. 

Seto set the spoon down, quiet, waiting until Mokuba had exhaled, dragging himself out of the unpleasant tar pit of memory, past what was pitch-black and intact. Thinking, maybe, after all, he did want to hold his fucking hand.

“I’ll ask you again: Do you want me in the room or not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a fave of mine. millennium eye is the scariest item actually. 
> 
> next week... haven't decided. a surprise for everyone


	8. Yuugi + Datebook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prompt was "yuugi + datebook." contains lite rivalshipping, but it's not about romance. enjoy!

**MONDAY, 8:26 AM**

Yuugi sat cross-legged in the soft, shallow cradle of his bed, half-asleep, phone in his hands. Anzu was on the other end of the video call, wandering through the New York apartment she shared with four other girls.

“ – so they come bursting out of the egg, and that’s just how the show starts. It gets loonier from there. But it means every week, she has to make another big-ass papier-mâché egg for her guest performer, and this week, that’s _me_. Hey Tiff, love the space buns,” Anzu said, turning to someone out-of-sight, and Yuugi heard a voice call back, in a cheerful sing-song, _thaaank youuu!_

“So you’re helping her make the egg?” Yuugi said.

“Yeah, she calls it ‘laying the egg.’ Performance artists are so weird,” she said, as Yuugi grinned with delight. “Anyway, gotta run. Can you do next Sunday?”

“Let me see,” Yuugi said, leaning over to swipe his weathered datebook off his night stand, the pages dogeared with almost a year’s worth of use. A blank datebook he’d filled out from June to June with every notable hour of his life, using a pen he kept tucked in the binding. He’d spilled water on it a few months ago and the pages had crinkled as they dried. Now it refused to sit flat, with gaps that rippled between the pages.

He held the phone in one hand and flipped clumsily through the datebook with the other, spreading it open on his thigh. After that Sunday, there was one blank week left in the datebook. “Nope, I’m booked. Let’s just do Monday again.”

“Works for me,” Anzu said. “Love ya! Bye!”

“Love you too, have fun laying your egg,” Yuugi said, and she flashed him an exasperated grin. The screen went black, and a dreamy silence descended on Yuugi’s bedroom once more. Yuugi flopped back down into bed with a contented sigh, tossing the phone onto the nightstand. He held the datebook over his head, his week carefully penned in. Class, his shifts at the game shop, and on Tuesday, he was seeing…

* * *

**TUESDAY, 6:37 PM**

“Fuck,” Jounouchi said, staring in bafflement at the cards lying face up on the playmat between them. They sat at a long, wooden table on the airy patio of a cafe, with vines flowing thick along the walls, the cards illuminated in the soft, inviting light of the lanterns strung across the space. “How did you win? _When_ did you win?”

“A few turns ago,” Yuugi confessed, idly churning the ice of his Italian soda with his straw. “But you had me on the ropes for a while there. If you played your Time Wizard combo a turn earlier, I would’ve lost.”

“Damnit! I knew it,” Jounouchi said, thumping his fist firmly on the table. “I keep forcing myself to _wait_. I just don’t wanna blow it again, like Nationals.”

“I think your nerves are making you doubt yourself,” Yuugi said. “Your instincts are strong. Just listen to them, and you’ll do fine.”

Jounouchi, gathering up his cards from the playmat, glanced up at him, the lantern light giving his faint blush a rosy glow.

“See, how the heck am I supposed to attack you when you say things like that?” he said. “Maybe I should get a practice duel with someone who actually pisses me off. Hey, ask your pal if he’ll duel me.”

“My _pal?_ Is that what he is?” Yuugi said, lifting an eyebrow as he reached for his phone; then he changed course, tucking his hand into the messenger bag at his feet and ferreting out his datebook. He checked the date. “I’m seeing him tomorrow, actually. I’ll just ask.”

“Perfect. How’s your Sunday looking? Honda said he’ll have my Duel Disk fixed by then.”

“I have plans already,” Yuugi said, dropping the datebook back into his bag and leaning back in his chair.

“Oh, okay, Mr. Popular. Don’t forget I leave for the tournament Friday after next. That’s in your book, right?” Jou said, and Yuugi hummed in reply. _Mm-hmm_. Then Jou leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table and his chin atop his hands, fixing Yuugi with a roguish look. “Who is Kaiba, if not your pal?”

Now Yuugi couldn’t help but blush, his skin warmer than the summer air. “Uh, he's…”

* * *

**WEDNESDAY, 9:57 PM**

Sitting next to Yuugi on the couch, one bent leg tucked underneath him and one arm slung over the back. Studying the screen of Yuugi’s laptop as Yuugi scrolled through the lines of code he’d abandoned, several days earlier, at dawn, surrendering to the frustration of a long and fruitless all-nighter. Lucky for him, Kaiba liked nothing so much as telling people they were wrong, why they were wrong, and how to stop being wrong.

Kaiba leaned closer, frowning intently, his force of presence buffeting Yuugi like a wave. A good wave, dense and heady, fragrant with his cologne. He had many, many things to say about object-oriented programming, all of which Yuugi had listened to very carefully, and none of which he’d actually heard.

“I found your problem,” Kaiba declared.

“Thank God, this assignment is driving me nuts,” Yuugi said, sighing with relief. “What is it?”

In response, Kaiba reached out and shut the laptop with a firm _whap_. “You’re distracted.”

“I am _not_ ,” Yuugi said.

“Tell me what I just said about using global variables.”

Yuugi bit his lip, scrambling through the last five, ten, fifteen minutes for whatever Kaiba had said about global variables, and found… nothing, except a keen awareness of the way Kaiba was staring at him now, leaning his cheek against his loosely curled hand, a wry smile tugging on his lips. 

“Uh,” Yuugi said after a moment, realizing he’d fallen neatly into the usual trap. “Don’t?”

Kaiba snorted. “When is this due?”

Yuugi leaned forward, momentarily escaping the weightless swell of feeling in his chest, and plucked his datebook off the coffee table from where it lay beside his textbooks. “In a week.”

“Alright. I have a few hours on Sunday or Tuesday. When would you like to waste my time next?” Kaiba said, with a sort of laid-back disdain.

“I think I’ll squander your Tuesday,” Yuugi said, tugging the pen free, scribbling a note. He set both laptop and datebook on the coffee table and settled back, deeply, breathlessly aware of Kaiba’s gaze on him, tracing lines of fire up and down his body.

“So,” Kaiba said, a low, teasing growl, his mouth inches from Yuugi’s ear. “What is so distracting to you?”

“Nothing,” Yuugi said, smiling, about to vibrate out of himself with impatience. “You have my full attention.”

“Good,” Kaiba said, and the next thing Yuugi knew he was swept up in a dark rush of warmth, Kaiba pressing a kiss like a hot, wet star to the curve of his neck. He fumbled blindly with one arm, catching Kaiba by the back of his head, pulling him down as he twisted and fell backwards onto the couch.

He huffed, a wordless plea for mercy, as Kaiba mouthed along the shell of his ear, making scandalous suggestions with his tongue, clearly enjoying himself.

“I think your clothes are the next problem we need to solve,” he said smugly, and Yuugi groaned, laughing.

"Oh, yes. Yes, please do - mmf!"

* * *

**FRIDAY, 4:13 PM**

A gentle chime broke through the cool, quiet air of the game shop. Yuugi, wandering the shelves with his scanner, conducting inventory, pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

_RYOU:  
finished writing my new campaign!! want in?_

_YUUGI:  
duh_

_what days are u thinking?_

_RYOU:  
sundays? that’s when everyone else is free_

_YUUGI:  
i can do sundays, but not this sunday_

_RYOU:  
not a problem. we can start next week. any plans?_

The question turned over in his chest like a stone, a tremendous weight, heavy and slow and dull. Yuugi stood motionless, staring down at his phone, the scanner dangling in his limp hand and the silence of the store falling over him like a shroud.

But he shook it off. Ryou had given him the idea.

_YUUGI:  
I’m going to the park with my datebook, you know the one_

_RYOU:  
oh_

_please send him my best_

_YUUGI:  
i will!_

_is this the space campaign you were telling me about?_

Pulling out of the subject like pulling a boot out of the mud, with staggering release. Yuugi resumed his task of taking inventory, stopping every so often to answer Ryou’s excited texts about Eldritch horrors and homebrew campaigns.

That night, he lay in bed and discovered the stone was still there, cradled in his straining ribs. So he opened the skylight in his bedroom, inviting the summer night to flow in. It sprawled open above him, hot and dark and flecked with stars, vibrating with the hum of cicadas hidden in the trees. The summer spinning its promise into a refrain. Every new day, each blank page of his datebook, beckoning him forward.

* * *

 **SUNDAY, 11:00 A** **M**

Yuugi awoke to a bright, beautiful June morning, sliding his feet into the secret pockets of cool still tucked away between the sheets. The skylight in his room revealed a clear, hot sky.

He flew through the rest of the morning, as light and taut as a kite, unburdened by exhaustion or idleness. On a whim, he opened his laptop, giving a quick eye to his assignment; Kaiba wouldn’t bring up global variables for no reason… and the solution presented itself, like a closed fist turning over to reveal the prize in its palm.

He didn’t cancel on Kaiba. They’d waste time some other way.

Buoyant, he left the house, with his datebook and a lighter in his bag. There were two stops to make before the park: first, a cafe, for an iced coffee, and second, the neighborhood bookstore, where he bought a brand-new blank datebook.

Then he began the long, pleasant walk down to the park, his phone on silent. The whole of Domino was cast in a drowsy summer light so smooth and liquid he wanted to cup it in his hands and drink it, to feel it run sweet and pure through his veins. Neither his mind nor his route wandered from their destination: the plank bridge in the park.

It sat in an isolated corner of the park, a leafy, overgrown grotto dappled with sunlight. The long pond slowed to a mirrored stillness here, cooled by the shade of the trees. Insects hummed in the foliage. As Yuugi stepped onto the plank bridge, the hollow thunk of his foot sent some small, shy creature plunging for safety into the water, leaving only ripples behind.

He knelt on the plank bridge and opened the old datebook, taking a moment to transfer the last remains of his schedule into the first week of the new datebook. His class schedule, his work schedule, his weekly call with Anzu, Joe’s tournament dates, the new campaign. All of it carefully penned in.

Then he leaned over the edge of the plank bridge, seeing his reflection on the surface of the water. It was harder with mirrors: they were too crisp, too defined. They showed him nothing but his own face. But if he unfocused his eyes a bit, if he took a deep breath and snapped the last piece into place and made a wish, the face on the water wavered. Just enough to believe.

“I miss you,” he said, to the water. “I miss you every day. I still feel you… gone, here.”

He made a fist, motioning to the center of his chest. An absence with weight; a nothing and a something all at the same time. The kind of puzzle Atem would love.

There was nothing else to add. He’d said most of it already, last year and the year before. They would see each other again, some day, and he had long since understood that he was not meant to wait and he was not meant to run. He was meant to stay right here, in the heart of his own life, and feel it beating.

Yuugi readjusted, sitting cross-legged on the bridge. He flipped through the datebook, going backwards to the beginning. The memories burst open inside him, as raw and fresh as a ripe fruit, swollen with color and feeling. Deadlines for that art history class. Flying out for Anzu’s solo show in December. His first date with Kaiba, sometime in March, although neither of them realized it was a date until the morning after. _CHAMPIONSHIP!!_ , on a weekend in September, when Jou had swept the Pan-Pacific. The pages were as crisp and dry as autumn leaves; they’d burn well.

He turned to the first page.

“Here’s what you missed,” Yuugi said, and began to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i adore this one. i legit wrote 90% of it on my phone on a bus after spending all day at an art museum. 
> 
> next week, kaiba regrets accepting yuugi's invite to trivia night. thanks for reading! comments and kudos always welcome!


	9. Violetship + "I'm not writing that down"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt was kaiba/jou and "i am not writing that down." slight tweaks from the original version to make it more kaijou. enjoy!

TRIVIA NIGHT, FAMILY FEUD STYLE, AT HONDA’S FAVORITE DIVE BAR. Team You’ve Activated My Strap Card is in an intimately close second place, and it rankles. So does the smell of fried food, so thick it butters the air; the deafening sound of talk and drunken laughter, clobbering Seto from all sides, every conversation chopped and screwed up by the gleeful knives of beer, peanuts and pretzels; and the floor, so drenched with years of spilled drinks it sticks - no, sucks on the soles of his boots, tacky little kisses, every time he gets up to run their team’s answer to the game master. He is never accepting Yuugi’s invite again (and this time, he means it.)

And what rankles most of all - name something rich people buy to show they’re successful, the game master says - what rankles is Jounouchi, sitting across the table, golden eyes whirling with the dive bar’s neon lights, nursing his one IPA, and smirking like he knows something about Seto that Seto doesn’t know. He leans across the table, helps himself to one of Seto’s fries, and says, “a custom-made dragon fighter jet.”

Even though the drinks are getting to him, a hot, heavy feeling pressed up right behind his face, Seto considers ordering a third old-fashioned. It’s the perfect fucking answer. Without a doubt a 10-pointer, enough to put them over the top. Jou’s instinct for this game, and for all things dumb bullshit, is astonishing. But then he adds a little wink to that smirk, pure rogue, like he knows that, too, and Seto is, of all things, having fun - no, just enjoying himself, he can't give them the win this early in the night, but regardless - it fucking rankles.

“No,” Seto says, clenching his teeth to keep the traitorous muscles of his mouth from splitting into a smile. “I am _not_ going to write that down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's it gonna be, rich boy: the glory of completely stomping trivia night, or defending the honor of your silly jet? 
> 
> next week: a 9-yo seto sneaks out of the orphanage and heads to the promised land: the arcade. comments always welcome!


	10. Seto + Arcade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt was "seto + arcade." enjoy!

Simple mathematics: the stuffed black cat in the toy store, she of liquid soft fur and gentle smile, her pink whiskers embroidered with a delicate hand, cost more than Seto could scrounge up in months. A single attempt at the claw machine cost a hundred yen. He had five hundred, each cool, silver coin tucked safely into the well-rolled cuff of his over-long trousers. **  
**

Awash in the vibrant pink light of the arcade, he knelt and unrolled the cuff, shaking the coins out into his palm, flashing like fish scales. Five coins. Five attempts. A claw machine full of stuffed cats, their plump bodies and long tails flattened against the glass.

It was a lazy evening in the arcade, with only a handful of other gamers; the bored teenage attendant at the front had barely blinked at him as he walked in, nine years old and alone. All around him, the games chimed and clanged, pixelated dreamscapes flaring across the screen, begging his attention, but not today. It wouldn’t be long before Miss Okabe and Takanori realized he hadn’t come back from his assigned chore, emptying the classroom trash cans out into the dumpster in the alley, but instead given them the slip once again, vanishing into the blue-black dusk.

Seto stood up, tucking four coins into his pocket, and faced the claw machine, squaring his shoulders. It loomed over him, tall and narrow, with a strip of white lights running around the top. The three-pronged claw dangled from the top. An odd pocket of harsh, silent light, like a shard of glass stuck into the fever-dream kaleidoscope of the arcade. He was not going to leave without a cat. Not without something Mokuba could call his own, a soft, warm thing to cling to in the night.

He dropped the first coin into the slot. It clattered into the belly of the machine, and the machine awakened, white lights blinking on and off, marching slow and ant-like around the top.

Carefully, his heart beating at a steady, nervous trot, he gripped the joystick and steered the claw over a cat that rose head and shoulders above the rest. An exploratory gamble. If the claw was strong enough, he could pick up this cat and go home with 400 yen left…

He hit the button, a firm _thwack_ with the thick part of his palm. The claw dropped, closing around the cat’s neck, and –

Came up empty. The stuffed cat rose only slightly from the pile before sliding right out of the prongs, falling back with a slump, still smiling. A smile both amused and indifferent. _Actually, this ISN’T going to be easy,_ she seemed to say, through a closed mouth. The prongs opened, dropping nothing into the prize chute as a chiming little melody played, like a sarcastic _ta-da!_

Seto took a deep breath and exhaled, slow and calm. That was fine. He’d prepared for this, for multiple failed attempts. He pulled another coin from his pocket and tucked it into the slot. Grab one around the body this time, where there were limbs and tails, and more purchase for the claw…

The claw scraped blandly at a stuffed cat and, once again, came up empty.

He huffed, pulling out a third coin, and hesitated, fingers poised over the coin slot. Maybe he should nudge, instead of grab? Aim for a stuffed cat close to the prize chute and knock her in? He’d seen that strategy work. Maybe this time…

Denied, for the third time. With a grunt through his teeth, Seto slammed his fist on the console, an atonal, metallic thump to the tinny melody. His frustration rose, hot and flickering, eating at the edges of his resolve. Why not just cut his losses and go home? Save the rest of the money to get some candy or something from the corner shop? That would be just as good, Mokuba would be just as happy with that…

With a jolt of determination, Seto shoved the fourth coin into the slot, before his mind changed. He’d seen the look on Mokuba’s face when Naoya got adopted. In the two days before she actually left the orphanage, her new parents had given her a beautiful stuffed rabbit that she toted around like a trophy, a taste, a promise of more. Mokuba had stared, wide-eyed with question and yearning, and then turned those blue-grey eyes up to Seto. When?

Now, Seto thought, with a knot in his throat, as he levered the joystick. You’re getting that _now._

No, said the claw machine. Not now. Maybe on the fifth try.

Something vibrated in his hands, restless and reckless, as he dropped his fifth and final coin into the coin slot. The machine lit up once more, lights dancing around the rim, and he let go of all thoughts of strategy, steering the claw to a stuffed cat that looked right, it felt right – he was going to do it, and it was going to work, and he was going to go back to the orphanage, find Mokuba, and present him with –

Nothing.

The claw grabbed nothing, rose with nothing, and dropped nothing into the chute.

He had nothing in his pocket. No more attempts.

Seto released the knot in his throat with a short, sharp yell of pure frustration, hitting the glass of the machine with the flat of his hand. None of the cats budged. The machine didn’t so much as tremble under the force of his anger, a candy-colored monolith, set there by some implacable god. His eyes burned, hot and wet, the lights of the arcade blurring around him. He stood rooted to the spot, blinking away tears and scowling. Stupid machine, stupid cats, stupid game, he had no coins left and nothing to show for it, nothing at all except the promise of a scolding from Miss Okabe when he finally slunk back through the back gate.

He wiped his eyes and turned around, ignoring the rest of the arcade games as he walked back to the front of the arcade. He was just about to step through the doors into the thick summer night, the air clotted with heat, when he heard someone call out.

“Kid,” she said. “Hey, kid.”

Seto turned around, frowning, hastily palming his cheek. It was the bored teenage attendant, standing a few feet behind him, smiling. In her hands she held one of the stuffed cats.

“Here,” she said, holding it out. “It’s yours.”

“But I didn’t win,” he said.

“Here’s a secret,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial smile. “I’m going to tell you, because I know you come in here a lot. Claw machines are rigged. You’re not supposed to win. But I think trying is enough sometimes, right?” 

She pressed the stuffed cat into his hands.

He stiffened, his cheeks burning... and hugged it to his chest. The cat was just as soft and welcoming as he’d dreamed it would be. 

“Now, scram,” she said, jerking her head towards the door, and with a quick, thankful nod, Seto turned and flew out into the night.

* * *

Back at the orphanage, through the back gate, and into the dorms, the cat held tightly in his folded arms. No one saw him. He slipped into the room where Mokuba slept, a small, blanketed bundle between a half-dozen other children, knelt by his futon, and shook him gently by the shoulder.

“Mokuba,” he said, hushed and quiet. “Look.”

Mokuba sat up, blearily rubbing his eyes, mumbling some incoherent question. Even in the dark, his eyes lit up as he saw the cat in Seto’s arms. 

“For me?” he said, his voice glowing with wonder.

“Yeah. All yours,” Seto said, tucking the cat under the blanket with him.

Behind him, the door opened, a shaft of light falling across the dark room, and Seto turned. The tall, familiar silhouette of Miss Okabe, casting the long shadow of another lecture about sneaking out. He didn’t care, flush with happiness as Mokuba stroked the cat, marveling at her fur.

“Seto, is that you?” she said, in a low whisper, taking a half-step into the room. “Where on earth have you been?!”

Seto turned to Mokuba one last time, smiling, triumphant, weighing the look on Mokuba's face against whatever dull, pointless chore he was about to receive in punishment. He'd always been good at math. 

“Back to bed,” he said, ruffling his hair, and followed her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought about ending this with him refusing to take the cat out of pride, but he and mokuba can have some nice things as children, as a treat. 
> 
> next week: ryou and kaiba on a quick little jaunt into the V I R T U A L W O R L D
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and kudos always welcome!


	11. Kaiba + Ryou: TTRPG

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prompt was "seto and ryou? (platonic or romantic) where they play a ttrpg together or somethin idk" and it was the "or something idk" where i really took it and ran
> 
> had a marvelous time writing this on my phone in the front seat of my car in a dark parking lot at 10 PM, eating my in-n-out burger, protein-style. enjoy!

Ryou inhaled, taking a deep breath of: the fresh, sweet smell of grass, the coolness of river water, something dry and grey in the wind, slightly rotten - smoke? And sulfur. The grasses were filled with the restless susurrus of the wind, each blade quivering with anticipation. Above him, a hawk tilted in lazy, wide circles, tracking the hidden paths of its prey. He stood on a dusty path halfway up the long slope of a steep hillside, the farmlands of the valley behind him peeled back to reveal the burned, blackened devastation beneath. The village from this distance looked like the charcoal remains of a bonfire, the air still shimmering with heat. 

The sun itself was hot, making him sweat in the thick, coarse silk of his mage’s robe, every purple thread saturated with light and heat. Mopping sweat from his brow, Ryou opened his options menu, the holographic display falling open, in the guise of an illuminated manuscript, and hovering at waist-height in thin air, perfectly tilted for reading. The parchment was old and yellowed, almost velvet to the touch, the edges frayed with age, and he couldn’t resist the urge to smell it, leaning in cautiously to take an experimental whiff. Strong notes of dust, old ink, age; an undertone of knowledge, of the forbidden kind. 

He selected Player Appearance and the page turned, with weight and heft, to reveal another. Kaiba didn’t miss a beat. Ryou had no doubt if he knelt down to drink from the stream that flowed down the slope, folding in clear ribbons past the rocks, the water would run cold over his fingers until they pruned. And the magic effects?

He swallowed. It was not just the sun that was making him sweat.

He’d just changed into something more practical - a short-sleeved green tunic, a pair of white breeches, leather boots that had just a bit of bite to the fit, like the player had to wear them in - when a chime pealed out from six feet away, as though someone had rung an invisible bell. The air tore apart, in odd, geometric anguish, like a broken mirror twisting into itself - 

and there was Kaiba, standing in the knee-high grass in his customary black turtleneck and tight pants, frowning with his arms crossed.

“Hello,” Ryou said. “It’s so nice to see you again. Your technology is… this is amazing. The attention to detail is incredible. The player screen, with the parchment - it even _smells_ like - ”

“What is this? Medieval?” Kaiba said, glancing around at his clothes, the distant village, taking no notice of his praise; Ryou bit his tongue in self-rebuke. As if buttering him up with compliments was going to help. 

“Western Europe. From the mid-11th century to the 12th. The age of knights and chivalry,” he said, deciding that maybe his best strategy was to simply be straightforward.

“I’m familiar with basic history, thank you. How… classic,” Kaiba said, in a tone that screamed disinterest, and Ryou’s heart began to plummet - already starting from behind? No, no, no, he reminded himself, straightening the slouch out of his shoulders. Yuugi had warned him about this. Kaiba was fantastically tough to impress, in general, and the Virtual World was his world, a realm he’d built with sweat and tears, and stolen back with blood. So he hand-picked every writer that wrote for Virtual World games, refusing to squander a single pixel on conventional nonsense and uninspired cliché. 

The last step - before he brought the axe down - was a short, playable demo, as proof of concept, written by the applicant and executed by the Virtual World team.

Ryou had come this far in the application process. Trust that, Yuugi said. And trust yourself.

Kaiba was looking at him, eyebrows arched with expectant curiosity.

“Er,” Ryou said. “Let’s get started, then. You’ll need to change.”

He pulled up the menu, revelling in the hovering parchment once more, and changed Kaiba’s appearance, like - like magic, the lines of Kaiba’s silhouette rippling like a sine wave from the bottom up, his modern-day clothing becoming a knee-length tunic of chainmail under a belted dark blue surcoat. Kaiba held still throughout the entire transformation, in smug admiration of the effect, his arms held out in a ballet dancer’s pose as chainmail draped down his shoulders to his wrists. 

In his right hand appeared, with a sharp, diamond flash of light, a long arming sword, the edge nicked with age and bloodspill. The hilt was black, with a sapphire gleaming in the pommel. A plain shield dropped onto his left forearm. 

He gave the sword an experimental spin, testing the heft with practiced ease, and slid it back into the leather scabbard on his belt.

“A knight, the charred, smoking remains of a village… I’m assuming I’m on a quest to kill a dragon?” he said, pushing back the hood of the chainmail so that it draped off his shoulders, and nodding up the slope to where the grasses tattered into rocky shale. 

“Yes, you can assume that,” Ryou said politely.

On cue, a child no more than twelve years old staggered up the dusty path from the village, her small torso heaving with breath, sweat and tears running in clean streaks down her soot-stained face. 

“Sir Knight,” she choked out. Flashing a look at Ryou that said _cheap blow_ , but unable to deny his own fraternal instinct, Kaiba dropped to one knee and caught her, his hands swallowing her thin, shuddering shoulders. Playing along, at least.

“Calm down,” he said, steadying her. Ryou imagined his anxiety as a small, hard rock, packing in the twist of every fraying nerve, and leaned all his weight onto one foot, grinding the rock into the dirt with his heel. “What is it?”

“They sent me to warn you, about the dragon,” she panted. “They said only the Chosen One can truly defeat the dragon, and bring peace back to the land. Many have tried. All suffered the same terrible fate - a fate worse than death.”

“I see,” Kaiba said. “And who is the Chosen One?”

The girl glanced at Ryou over Kaiba’s shoulder, her eyes glinting with fear. 

“No - no one knows,” she said. “But all the oracles say they’re coming… a knight with a pure and worthy heart. Sir Knight, don’t go. Come back to the village. It’s safe there. What do you gain from this? Our humble lands aren’t worth the danger!”

“I think they are,” Kaiba said, thumbing soot off her face, and frowning as her cheek pixelated, briefly, and resumed a skin-like texture. "Open master commands, user ID 000002510. Initiate master log. Begin recording: skin-to-skin contact glitch reappeared during writer play-test, candidate Bakura, R. Begin patch work immediately. End recording. Disperse to Virtual World team, flag Sawada, project manager. Close master commands. Did you know, one of the most compelling unsolved problems in physics is the lack of a theory that realizes both general relativity and quantum mechanics?”

The girl gave him a wary look, wide-eyed with faint alarm. Ryou sucked in a breath, grinding the anxiety rock down, down, down.

“You - you speak in tongues, Sir Knight,” she said. “Are you also an oracle? Has your future-sight failed you? Don’t you see that only death lives on the mountain?”

Kaiba snorted and stood up, turning to Ryou. “A solid response to non-standard player input. Doesn’t ignore modern concepts, but re-contextualizes them in the setting of this world via a framework of prophecy, and redirects the player to the plot.” 

“Um… thank you?” Ryou said. “I wanted this world to feel like it has a future, too, not just a history. I wanted to place it on a timeline, like it - ”

Kaiba’s attention swung back to the girl, still standing there with her eyes darting between them, full of bafflement. 

“Return to the village, girl. Tell them my future-sight never fails me.”

The girl retreated backwards, warily, twisted on her heel, and fled down the path.

"If I go down to the village, what’ll I find?” Kaiba said.

“More information about the Chosen One, and an outlaw who tries to recruit you to her band of thieves, with the option to join them for a stealth-based quest.”

"Hm. You have the imagination and the decency to offer me something other than blatant bait, which I don’t always bite. The cliché of the Chosen One is boring as hell, it’s both over-done and deterministic, but I think… yes. Yes, I’ll bite. Let’s go see your dragon.”

In the wake of this… compliment?, Ryou could only offer him a small, tentative smile, his heart clenching tight around Yuugi’s advice. 

Kaiba started up the path. 

“Er, Kaiba - you might want to check your inventory before you encounter the dragon.“

Kaiba’s hand padded around his waist until he found the small satchel that sat on his hip. Another parchment unfurled in the air before him, listing its contents:

  * Two full healing spells;
  * Two glamour spells, for changing the guise of a person or object;
  * Two transformation spells, for changing a person or an object into an animal;
  * Two scrying spells, for locating people or objects;
  * Two ignis spells, for commanding fire;
  * Two aqua spells, for commanding water; and
  * Two ventus spells, for commanding wind.



Ryou watched him as he read. He’d carved a small, thick groove into the dirt below his foot. Surely, that was enough for Kaiba to get creative?

Kaiba only closed the parchment with a brisk flick of his hand. Then he started up the mountain, Ryou following nervously behind.

* * *

The mountain path was rougher than Ryou expected, a tightly-coiled spring of switchbacks, leading to the curved lip of a high pass. After several minutes of trudging the dust in silence, he was panting for breath, his feet aching and blistering in their boots, and deeply regretting adding this little detail to the story. Next time, he was just going to put the dragon on a rolling, grassy plain, and he’d make it like an American autumn corn maze, because it still needed to be a challenge, and when the players got to the center they’d find the dragon’s decaying, rotting corpse and realize they’d been stuck inside the maze for five hundred years and everyone they loved was dead, and if they wanted to go back to their own time they’d have to find out how to resurrect the dragon, but only at a terrible cost, a sacrifice of some kind… Not his best off-the-cuff work, but there were usable concepts in there, somewhere. If there was a next time.

Despite being laden down with the chainmail, each tiny link flashing like fish scales in the airy slanting of the afternoon sun, Kaiba seemed unaffected by the demands of the hike, propelling himself forward with long, energetic strides. How?

Ryou thought about asking for a break. Or drinking water from the stream. Or changing his boots for something comfier, but he didn’t have anything else in his outfit inventory except the mage robes, and the slippers might be even worse… he stopped, hands on his hips, gathering his breath.

From here the valley sprawled below them, a wide, velvety plain, its edges rising and scalloped by mountains. The village fit in the circle of his thumb and forefinger, a smoking black thumbprint. The team had done a fantastic job: the stream ran down the mountain, flattened into a river, and ran south, lazy and serpentine, a green-blue ribbon cutting through the yellow plains, just like he’d outlined in his initial description of the world….

Wait. 

This was all _virtual_. 

There was no such thing as air, here, or rivers or sunshine or grasses.

His real, physical body was half-asleep in a Virtual World testing pod on the 17th floor of the Kaiba Corp Tower, and his body _here_ was just a series of algorithms, and if he didn’t want to sweat, he didn’t _have_ to fucking sweat! Thank God!

Up ahead, Kaiba noted the absence of his footfalls and turned around, one hand resting easily on his sword hilt. From his position on the path, he looked down at Ryou from several feet up, which doubled the intimidation of his already formidable bearing.

“I’m fine,” Ryou said. “Just… admiring the view.”

“Are you having your Matrix moment? That’s what my programmers call it,” Kaiba said.

Ryou laughed. “I think so. I was tired but I don’t feel it at all, anymore. Like all the fatigue’s just melted away and I could run a marathon.”

“Is that something you enjoy?”

“Oh, no. I hate sports.”

Kaiba snorted.

“So, tell me. Why do you want _this_ job?” he said. “At _my_ company? Writing stories with _my_ technology?”

“Er - ” Blindsided by the swerve in topics, Ryou tripped over his thoughts. Surely he must’ve read his application? Maybe he didn’t have the time. Stick to straightforward. “I’m sure you remember my performance in Battle City?”

“Yes, I remember,” Kaiba said, which was honestly more than Ryou expected of him.

“Well, I don’t play much Duel Monsters anymore,” he said, “but I still.. every once in a while, I turn my Duel Disk on and play a few cards, just to see my monsters come out, see them breathe… you know I run a Zombie deck, full of demons and dead things, but SolidVision makes them feel so - so _alive_. You took these fantasy monsters that exist only in our heads and put them in our world.”

“Virtual World game writers don’t work on SolidVision products,” Kaiba countered.

“Right, I know that. To me, Virtual World and SolidVision are the inverse of each other, or opposites that contain each other, like, like yin and yang - with SolidVision, the unreal enters the real, and becomes real. In the Virtual World, the real - ” Ryou motioned to himself - “enters the unreal, and becomes unreal. We like to put walls between imagination and reality, you know, taxes are real and unicorns aren’t, but with SolidVision and Virtual World, _there is no wall._ _That’s_ the world I want to write stories for.”

“Hm,” Kaiba said, the corner of his mouth curving up in a smile. “Interesting take.”

And he waited, saying nothing more, until Ryou realized he was waiting for him; and trotted lightly up the path to join him.

* * *

By the time they reached the top of the mountain pass, the air had turned a clear, dusky gold. The mountains cast long, black shadows across the valley, like dark teeth, chewing up the farmlands. The mountain pass was saddle-shaped, one side sloping down into the valley they’d just come from, the other flattening into a smaller, higher bowl, cupping a pale blue-green lake between its rocky palms.

Kaiba scrambled onto the nearest large rock, his head swinging as he scanned the lake valley. Ryou wrapped one arm around his waist and bit his thumb. They had found a deep, penetrating quiet, the kind of wilderness quiet that was devoid of texture of any kind; no bugs or burbling streams or bird song. It was not even like holding your breath, waiting, because that implied a coming moment of exhale, a sigh of relief. This was a perfect stillness. 

And hidden somewhere inside it was a dragon. 

Ryou bit harder, until he remembered the pain was fake and did nothing, and he had to come up with something else to temper his anxiety, which was definitely, definitely real.

 _Kaiba’s gonna flip his shit when he sees your dragon,_ Yuugi said, from the back of Ryou’s mind, Ryou’s demo manuscript in hand. _In a good way or a bad way? Is it too derivative? What does it matter that he’ll flip his shit for my dragon when he flips his shit for ANY dragon? He’s a slut for dragons. Oh my god, you can’t say that! Yuugi, please, help - nope. You got this. You know what you’re doing._

Even the metallic _shing_ of Kaiba’s sword coming out of its sheath seemed small, in an unnatural way, a pointless, petty defiance. 

A shadow fell across the lake valley. 

Both of them looked up -

and an enormous dragon hurtled out of the sky, landing with thundering force on all four clawed feet, flattening trees and boulders beneath its reptilian bulk. Ryou staggered backwards and fell, in an awkward, clumsy crab pose; Kaiba threw his shield over his face and dug in, undaunted.

"HAVE YOU COME TO KILL ME?” the dragon boomed. “MISERABLE WRETCH?”

Kaiba lowered his shield, just enough for his first full look at the dragon. From his spot, crumpled on the ground, Ryou saw, in the shadow below the shield, another slender smile. The dragon’s hide was a dark, luxurious blue-black, mottled like snakeskin but textured with the heavy crags and knobs of crocodiles. It lowered its head on its long, arching neck, gracefully bearing the weight of two massive, curving horns, and stared down at them with fathomless acid-green eyes.

Even Ryou, who had designed it, sat enthralled: every movement it made - the eager flick of its tail, the claws, curling into the dirt, glinting under a layer of blood and grime, the shuddering of its leathery wings as they folded into its long body - hinted at indomitable power. It was a true creature of legend, a titan from the youngest days of the world, demanding both reverence and terror.

“I have!” Kaiba replied blithely, despite announcing it in a ringing voice.

“ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE CAN DEFEAT ME,” the dragon said. “YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF SUCH A FEAT. I SEE YOUR HEART, BLACKGUARD KNIGHT. I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD YOU’VE SPILLED WITH YOUR SWORD, BRIGHT AND PUNGENT. I CAN HEAR THE CRIES OF ALL THE LIVES YOU’VE LET EBB INTO THE DIRT AT YOUR FEET!”

“I’m here to avenge the village!” Kaiba shouted. 

“YOU COME UP HERE TO DEFEND SOME PATHETIC SCRAPS OF BRICK AND WOOD, THINKING YOU CAN KILL ME, AND CALL THAT HONOR? REDEMPTION? YOU CALL THAT COURAGE? ITS TRUE NAME IS VANITY! EMPTY AND FALSE! IT WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN BEFORE I DO!” the dragon boomed again. “LEAVE. I WAS ONCE NAIVE AND VAIN LIKE YOU. COME BACK WHEN YOU ARE MORE THAN A MERE WORM, OR ELSE SUFFER MY FATE!”

Ryou had clambered to his feet and bolted for the safety of a low ridge, which gave him a perfect view of Kaiba, head held high and proud as he gazed unflinching at the dragon, several hundred times his size. He’d written those words in his notebook on the metro, leaning his head against the cool midnight glass, pausing every other line to ferret out another piece of sour candy from his bag. Then he’d missed his stop. That trundling, light-washed world of a train car seemed impossibly distant now - a rapidly fading dream, to be remembered only in flashes and silence. To hear the words come out of the smoking jaws of this dragon, each syllable flowing in a delicious, indulgent baritone from its shining teeth, filled him with a breathless exhilaration, his heart hammering in his throat - this was real!

“Only one of us is suffering fate today!” Kaiba shouted back, a laugh in his voice, and then threw a glance at Ryou. “‘Suffer _my_ fate?’ Is that a typo?”

“VERY WELL. COME KILL ME! THERE IS PEACE IN DEATH, AND ONLY ONE OF US CAN CLAIM IT!”

“I - watch out!” Ryou yelled, as the dragon lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut on the empty air where Kaiba had been standing half a second before. Kaiba threw himself out of the way, a nimble tuck and roll, and scrabbled across the shale towards higher ground. Behind him, the dragon swung its massive head, nostrils red and flaring, mouth curled up in a savage draconic grin, glinting with the promise of violence. 

No sooner had Kaiba flung himself behind a scattering of boulders, shield raised, than it unleashed a jet of fire so hot and scorching the boulders glowed red, their rough faces melting in sheets. Ryou felt the heat wash across his face, from several dozen yards away. 

The fire died out. The dragon snorted in satisfaction, horse-like, a loud, wet huff of smoke. The boulders sizzled as they cooled into their new, bizarrely dripping forms.

Kaiba emerged from behind a boulder, sweating and singed, his face streaked with ash and his eyes shining. He tossed the warped, melted wreckage of his shield aside, where it bounced and clattered against the rocks.

“SO YOU STILL LIVE? A MISTAKE. WHAT COMES NEXT WILL HURT WORSE!”

“For you!” Kaiba hurled back, and threw his hand into the air, a gesture Ryou had seen countless times on a duel field - a lightning rod, a summoning. “VENTUS!” 

The wind picked up, in a giddy, howling whirl, bringing with it a cloud of dust that descended gritty and blinding and pale across the valley. Kaiba and the dragon vanished from sight inside it. Mentally Ryou subtracted one spell from Kaiba’s satchel, and bit his tongue to restrain his smile. The magic worked whether or not Kaiba called his attacks. 

“THIS WON’T HELP Y - ” Cut off by a wet chop and an ear-splitting draconic scream, a raw, awful sound, torn out of an unwilling throat. Just below it, a glorious, cascading laugh. _“WRETCH! WORM!”_

The dust settled, revealing glistening, dark-green blood splattered across the rocks, and a single severed claw, its flesh still twitching. The dragon seethed, its wounded foot curled in agony. Kaiba was clear across the other side of the pass, by the dragon’s tail, grinning open-mouthed as he panted for breath. His chainmail and surcoat dripped with dragon blood; his hair was thick with it. 

“COME GET YOUR PEACE, DRAGON!” he bellowed, and the dragon slung its head around, tail coiling in an ominous whip. 

Again Kaiba lifted his hand, shouted “VENTUS - !”

And a second dust cloud barreled into the valley, as the dragon roared back, “THAT WON’T WORK AGAIN!”

It whipped its tail through the dust cloud, a scythe-like sweep - smacking something hard into the rocks with a thick, fleshy crunch of bone that made Ryou’s insides clench tight with terrified sympathy.

The dragon whirled around, clearing the dust with several storm-gathering wingbeats.

This was not real. This was just pixels, neatly arranged and running in rivers of algorithms - just a clever series of ones and zeroes - and yet Ryou gasped, the dragon laughing, at the sight of Kaiba lying in a crumpled, motionless heap in the rocks. He hadn’t considered Kaiba might actually fail to kill the dragon - all thoughts of jobs and game-writing abandoned - unreality aside, the mind had a way of making it real - what the fuck happened if Kaiba _died?_

“IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE, WORM?” the dragon said, nudging Kaiba’s limp body with its claws, rolling him over. His head lolled, his body twisted into a horrifying, broken-boned slouch. How on earth was Ryou going to explain this to Yuugi? Hell. “I TOLD YOU, YOU’RE NOT W - ”

Ryou almost didn’t see it - a hawk in a dive, arrow-straight, from the top of the sky, diving through a blinding flash of light several stories up - and out of the light came Kaiba, alive and whole, plummeting towards the dragon’s head, gripping his sword with both hands - plunging it straight through the top of the dragon’s skull. 

He left the sword hilt-deep in dragon flesh as he pitched forward with the force of impact, rolling over the dragon’s brow, flailing to catch himself - on the massive horn. Clinging, victorious, as the great dragon swayed, its green eyes filming, and finally slumped, in agonized slow motion, to the earth, body first, head last, with a thundering, bone-rattling crash. 

It released one last, rattling breath, the trees shuddering in the fetid breeze.

The valley descended into stillness once more. 

Ryou sat down on his low escarpment with a limp thump, burying his face in both hands. This was just a Virtual World, where at one point everything would power down and they’d wake up safe and sound in the squishy, air-conditioned comfort of a pod, and he had, after all, planned on Kaiba killing the dragon, but Kaiba’s sheer nerve seemed beyond that. Yuugi was right. The guy was, maybe, a little nuts. Completely off his rocker.

“Ryou,” Kaiba said, above him, and Ryou lifted his head. Kaiba rested the sword jauntily across his shoulder, the rest of him filthy with dragon blood and human blood and dirt. “I have to say, I enjoyed your dragon. A shame it had to die.”

“Your strategy… You used a glamour spell? On a… rock? To make it look like your dead body,” Ryou said. “And then a transformation spell.”

“Correct. Is that all for your demo?” Kaiba said, cocking an eyebrow, both bloody and disdainful, and Ryou swallowed. “I was hoping for more of a cha - ”

His words stopped hard in his throat, a harsh, hacking sound. His free hand flew to his neck, mouth dropping open in pain and confusion, eyes widening. He coughed - or tried to, achieving nothing more than a thin, ugly retching, his face going white - and Ryou watched, in fascinated horror, as his gamble began to play out. There was nothing he could do to help; he’d written it that way.

The sword clattered to the stones, green blood dripping off the shining edge, as Kaiba staggered sideways, gasping for breath, both hands on his neck - what was the algorithm doing to him? Ryou had only written ‘a suffocating, squirming pain, concentrated in the lungs,’ and resolved to think more carefully about what types of pain he might inflict on the player characters, if the gamble paid off… But how interesting to know even the creator of the Virtual World himself suspended his disbelief - his knowledge of the truth - sometimes, and indulged in pain…

He collapsed to his knees, stretching one hand out, fisting it around Ryou’s collar and dragging him closer - 

“What - ” he choked out, eyes glaring into Ryou’s, in baffled, furious agony - terrified - they rolled backwards, the blue sliding away to white, as he slumped over himself. 

His hand went slack and fell. What life remained slipped away in a low, shaking sigh.

Ryou took him by the shoulders and gently lay him down, passing a hand over his eyes to close them. Dead, but not really.

“Just hold on a moment,” he said. The body had been vacated. The soul - the player - was awakening elsewhere.

He waited a few moments, absorbing the stillness, the detail on the leaves of the pine trees; the way the lake water shimmered in golden flecks with late afternoon light. It was maybe his last few seconds to enjoy the world he’d written, rendered in full splendor by the magic of technology, and he’d banished his anxiety from both his mind and body, to live out its exile in the real world. It didn’t belong here.

The great dragon body began to stir, drowsily, waking up from a deep, deep sleep. The deepest sleep.

Ryou stood up and slid down the escarpment to the dragon, pebbles and dust avalanching around his feet. The stab wound in its skull was knitting back together; the severed claw was crawling back to its slow-bleeding joint. There was an agonized hiss, forced through the dragon’s tightly-clenched teeth, and a vibrating groan, deep in its chest, as it gathered itself out of death.

Its eyes opened, in wary slits - not the bright, acid green, but a stunning, oceanic blue.

“OW. FUCK,” it growled, in Kaiba’s voice, magnified and twice as resonant. “OPEN MASTER COMMANDS, USER ID 000002510. SUSPEND ALL PAIN ALGORITHMS. CLOSE MASTER COMMANDS.”

He rolled upright, flexing his wings with experimental care. He arched his neck, looking down at Ryou.

“YOU TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON.”

“Yes,” Ryou said cautiously.

"NO ONE HAS EVER TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON BEFORE,” Kaiba said. "SO I WASN’T WORTHY? IS THIS WHAT IT MEANS TO SUFFER THE DRAGON’S FATE? EVERYONE WHO KILLS THE DRAGON BECOMES THE DRAGON, AND ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE BREAKS THE CYCLE. IS THAT HOW IT GOES?”

“That’s how it goes.”

“HOW DO I FIND THE CHOSEN ONE?”

 _"You_ choose them,” Ryou said. “You decide what makes them worthy.”

“SO ANYONE CAN BE THE CHOSEN ONE? ANYONE CAN BREAK MY CURSE?”

“That’s right.”

Kaiba pondered that for a moment, flexing his claws idly in the dirt, the massive slabs of muscle in his shoulders shifting as he tested the strength and fit of his new draconic body. His gaze drifted out over the lower valley, eyes clouding briefly with memories of another story, another game, another man; one who had always seemed real and unreal, all at once, no matter what world he lived in. Ryou had heard it all from Yuugi.

Then Kaiba looked at him and started to laugh, a sound that echoed and rebounded across the small lake valley, the water shivering as each delighted peal of laughter rolled across. Ryou blushed as it buffeted him from all sides.

“IS THAT SO,” Kaiba said, with dry relish. “YOU’RE HIRED.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are genuinely, truly, few things i love more than turning kaiba into an actual dragon.
> 
> as for next week: that's all, folks! more prompt fills will be posted here in the future, but please note that prompts are **currently closed.** i take prompts every few months or so, so if you're interested, keep an eye out :)
> 
> and, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading!


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